


The Camera Loves You

by Asynca



Series: The Camera Loves You-Verse [1]
Category: Tomb Raider (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, S.S. Endurance - Freeform, and because people have been asking me to migrate it for 100000000 years, because I don't trust that site, migrated from ff.net
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 17:45:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 37
Words: 125,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11018409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asynca/pseuds/Asynca
Summary: How do you recover from an ordeal like on Yamatai? Lara, with Sam's help, is trying to answer this question whilst also coming to terms with the fact she's not the same person she used to be. It's a welcome distraction when another promising job offer is made to her. TR1/TRA/Survivor Plot Remix. Lara/Sam, with complications from a familiar foe.





	1. Chapter 1

"… _In breaking news, as Search and Rescue and the Special Army Corps comb the newly discovered island tentatively called 'Yamatai' in the notorious Dragons' Triangle, the body count continues to rise. Operations believes that as many as fifty vessels could be wrecked off the coast of the new island – each with entire crews aboard. Only a handful of survivors managed to make it back to the mainland, and we'll cross live to the International Medical Centre in Tokyo where they are currently being treated for their injuries. Sarah Handley is on the ground in Tokyo. Sarah?_ " Another voice spoke. " _Thanks, Robert. Here, in front of Tokyo International Medical Centre, the whole world waits to hear about the horrors that have been discovered in the mountains of Yamatai_ —"

Horrors I didn't actually want to even think about at that moment. I turned over in the bed. "Sam…"

Wrapped in a hospital blanket, she was standing transfixed over near the television. She made a face when I looked over at her. "I know, I know," she said reluctantly. "But you don't get do-overs for this stuff, you know? Look," she held the remote at the TV and clicked through a series of channels. All of them had news coverage featuring the island. "We're on _every_ channel, not just my dad's."

I gave her a look, and she held the remote up one more time and the screen went black.

Wandering over to the window, she parted the curtains and took a peek outside. There was so much light coming from below despite the fact it would have been about two in the morning. I couldn't even imagine how many people were outside. I could also see news helicopter doing laps of the hospital.

Sam would have loved to been filming the whole thing, I thought. It was a pity that her aunt had taken the camera off her as soon as she'd arrived, no doubt to hand over to the BBC at some strategic moment. In the meantime, Sam was walking around restlessly like a smoker who'd had their cigarettes confiscated. The doctors had even taken her mobile off her before I'd gone into surgery.

She let the curtains fall closed again. "Well," she shot me a grin. "I did say you'd be the _world famous_ _Lara Croft_ one day, didn't I?"

"Not exactly how I'd imagined it." I smiled faintly back at her as she came and sat on the edge of my bed. "Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

This time, _she_ gave me a look. "Shouldn't you?" She examined the machine feeding IV fluids into my arm. "Besides, how do you sleep off 'nearly possessed by ancient demi-god'? I don't think there's medical advice for that." She lifted the edge of my blankets, presumably to check on my wound. Unfortunately it was covered by a hospital gown and what felt like a pillow-sized wad of gauze dressing. "Is the pain too bad?"

I considered her question. "Not as much since the operation." It turned out I'd perforated my bowel, and by the time I'd arrived in the medical centre, I'd been in a rather bad way. I thought I was just very tired given what I'd been through, but the doctors had kept checking my blood pressure and my temperature and shaking their heads at each other. Trying her best to keep up with translating what they were saying, Sam had given up with the medical terminology and been entering words into the Japanese Dictionary app on her iPhone. "What's ' _septicaemia'_?" she had asked me, as if I'd have known.

They'd pumped me to the eyeballs full of antibiotics and then operated. I actually felt a lot better now than I had yesterday morning when I woke up, despite having spent half the day under general anaesthetic. Sam had pulled her usual strings (which usually consisted of mentioning her father's name) and had her own bed wheeled into my room in Recovery. The doctors had told her to let me rest, but she'd basically ignored them.

"Scoot over," she told me, as if I wasn't extremely ill.

"Your own bed not soft enough?" I joked, but still managed to slowly and awkwardly move so there was enough room for her to lie down next to me. "Watch the IV cord."

"Aw, come on," she swung her legs up and ducked under the cord as she lay down, so it was across her chest. "I was thinking we could share the morphine."

"Get your own grievous injury," I told her faux-seriously. "Those painkillers are all mine."

"Killjoy." She arranged the blanket over both of us. It was rather sweet to watch her diligently tucking me in and making sure I had enough room and enough blanket on the tiny hospital bed. After she'd finished, she curled up next to me and put her head on my shoulder. It seemed like a bad moment to mention she was pulling on some fresh stitches on my arm, so I decided I would endure it. Her hair smelt like shampoo, but not the apple-scented one she usually used.

I must have been drifting off, because went she spoke it jolted me a little. "I thought you were going to die," she murmured. "I didn't really tell you everything the doctors were saying."

Judging by the devastation on her face when she'd been listening to them, I'd figured as much. "I've discovered it's rather difficult to kill me." I smiled wryly at her, and she seemed comforted by that, relaxing against me.

"Good," she said, exhaling. Her breath seeped through my clothes and warmed the skin on my arm. "I'd don't know what I'd do if…" She didn't finish that statement. It was only a few seconds before she spoke again, lifting her head off my shoulder. Her voice was breaking. "Lara…"

She was so close I could see every detail of her face. She had some tiny bruises on her neck – presumably from Matthias – and some cuts around her mouth. Her eyes were swimming. My eyes settled on her lips again, remembering one drunken snog in Berlin after a group of rowdy British boys on a stag night had dared us to.

She was swallowing with difficulty, her lips pressed in a line. She wanted to say something to me, but couldn't push it through the emotion. She was probably so exhausted and so overwhelmed, just like all of us were. I reached up and brushed the hair from her face so it wouldn't stick there when the tears spilt down her cheeks.

That movement broke the dam. Her tears rolled of her cheeks and her small nose onto my shoulder, wetting my gowns and the dressing. With the hand that was behind her back I stroked her, holding her against me as she collapsed again on my shoulder.

It was so good to have her here with me, safe. Every time I'd heard her voice through the radio I'd worried it would be the last time I'd hear it, especially as everyone else had started to die around me. I'd never struggled so much to breathe as when I'd seen that corpse trying fill her body with its filthy soul. When she was across my lap after it was all over, smiling up at me…

My own eyes swam a little, but I blinked away the tears before she could see them.

None of it was real, yet. I was dreading when it would be. It was surreal to be sick without Roth watching football and yelling at the TV while I was convalescing next to him. He was never much good at the whole taking care of someone thing, but I was so used to his awkward attempts that I almost wondered how I would get better without him.

As if reading my thoughts, she said. "You're okay."

I nodded, trying not to remember the swamps of blood, or the axe in Roth's back, or Alex pretending to be stoic as I'd left him. Poor Steph… whatever had happened to her, I didn't want to know about it. There would be time for all of that later when I wasn't stitched up like an old rag doll and full of drugs.

I didn't really want to think at all, and it was comforting to have Sam curled beside me.

As I was falling asleep again, Sam woke me up. "You could totally have my kidney if you need it," she told me, in all seriousness. "Like, if something like this happens again but it gets you in the kidney."

It was such a strange thing to stay that I couldn't help but laugh at the suddenness of it. The pain in my stomach from the movement of it was the only thing that stopped me. "I'll keep that in mind," I told her, ruffling her hair. "Go to sleep or we won't get any before we have to fend off all your relatives in the morning."

Smiling into my shoulder, she did so. I fell asleep soon after her, dreaming of the rocking of the sea and gentle rain.


	2. Chapter 2

A flash actually woke me up, and for a split second I expected it to be followed by a bang and searing pain. I must have sat upright during my panic, because as my eyes cleared I found myself staring at Sam's father and aunt at the foot of the bed. Their suits were so perfectly tailored, all they'd have needed were sunglasses and they'd look like they belong in the MI6.

Besides me, Sam was rubbing her eyes and grumbling about me waking her up.

"Good Morning, Lara," her father said to me in the most amused of tones. Then, to Sam, he said something in Japanese which I couldn't even nearly catch.

"You'd better not," she told him, but hurriedly ran a hand over her hair to smooth it as her aunt took another photo of us.

The whole lot of them were complete stereotypes, I swear it.

"Some breakfast?" Sam's aunt asked me, bringing over a lunch box that had been lovingly wrapped like a window dressing. "CNN will meet with you at ten."

I made a face. "CNN? Why not BBC or Al Jazeera?"

"Better coverage," Mr. Nishimura said shortly, and then turned around and laid a suit carrier over the foot of the bed.

Sam rolled her eyes beside me. "He's, like, best buddies with Ted Turner." She stretched and slid out from under the blanket, going to investigate what was in the suit carrier.

"Keep this interview brief," Mr. Nishimura instructed me. "We will arrange a proper news feature within the next two days. Say to them you are tired."

"Well, it wouldn't be a lie," I conceded.

"Ooh, Roche! I totally love his stuff!" Sam had already unzipped one of the carriers and was holding up a grey jumper that looked like it should have been priced at ninety-nine p in a charity store. It was the kind of jumper you wore watching late night movies and were horribly embarrassed to answer the door in. There was also a corn yellow scarf—"an infinity scarf," Sam told me— and some tracksuit pants. Wasting no time pulling them on, Sam admired herself in the bathroom mirror on the opposite side of the room.

"It's totally chill," she decided, turning. "Like, really relaxed. I should be holding a takeaway coffee when they're filming." She turned back to her father. "What's Lara going to wear?"

Mr. Nishimura shook his head. "They're going to interview her in bed."

"What?" The words spilt out of my mouth before I had the sense to stop them. I mentally winced, reminding myself I was in Japan and speaking to one of the most powerful men in it, who was also my best friend's father.

"Oh, that's a great idea," Sam agreed with him as if I'd never spoken, coming over and sitting on the edge of my bed. She rolled up one of my sleeves and began pulling at the gauze. I batted her hand away. "They should have a nurse redressing this cut here while they're talking, and 'accidentally' get some footage of it. It looks really serious."

"That's because it's seriously an enormous hole in my arm."

Mr. Nishimura may have slightly smiled, and he said something which sounded like, "That's my girl." He checked his watch. "I must go," he said. "There is a lot of work to be done." He looked back toward me. "Samantha will help you for now," he said. "Just don't say too much."

They left, expensive shoes clicking the linoleum in unison as they exited. Did they really come just to drop off food and clothes?

Already, Sam was fiddling with my hair. I groaned. "If you must do something, find me a dressing gown or another blanket or something. I'm not wearing a bra."

"Yeah, somehow I don't think that's going to affect ratings." She ducked her head down and winked at me. My cheeks flushed hot with blood that should best have been saving itself for my poor organs.

I must have looked a sight, really. I could barely get out of bed and people were still managing to earn a quid off me. It was odd to be treated like such a commodity when if I'd shot that many people in almost any other situation and I'd be in prison for life. I made a face. Not that I was begrudging Sam's family from doing their jobs, of course: their money was the only reason we'd set out to the Dragon's Triangle anyway, and I was stupid to think that the funding choice was purely charitable.

It just seemed really awful that so many people had died, and instead of honouring their memories I was trying to figure out how to look as beaten up as possible in front of a news camera.

Sam mistook my expression as worry. "Hey, Sweetie, it'll be fine. You'll look gorgeous even without any clothes on." She paused. "Oh, wow, that sounded…"

"I'm not prepared to go that far for ratings." It did make me smile, though. "It's just…" I shrugged. "I've done this amazing thing, I know that. I don't regret it, but at the same time I do."

Sam's hands paused as she plaited my hair. She didn't say anything for a few moments. "All of us knew sailing into those waters was dangerous. It's not like you lied to us and told us it was perfectly safe or something." She undid the plait she'd just made. "It looks better loose."

There was a cursory knock on the door as two men entered. I recognized them as the doctors who had initially consulted on me when I'd arrived. They had a nurse with them who pulled a chair up to my bedside and attached a syringe to the neck of the IV. I watched it fill with my blood.

"Nine-forty," Sam said, checking the clock on the wall as they left. "I'm going to get a coffee. You want one?"

I was fairly certain I wasn't supposed to be having caffeine with whatever was being fed down the IV, but I doubted after everything a coffee would end up being the death of me, so I nodded.

Without Sam to chat to, there was really nothing at all to do in the hospital room. The remote was all the way over on Sam's bed, and I was actually rather worried that the exact moment I would get up to retrieve it would be the moment CNN would barrel in with their camera pointed straight at the gap in my hospital gown. I stayed put and stared at my heart monitor, wondering what all the numbers meant.

Sam startled me by jogging back in, and instead of giving my coffee to me she put it next to her own bed. She was also carrying a large shopping back which she hurriedly hid in the bathroom. As she was pulling up a chair to my bedside, the nurse who had drawn blood earlier followed her in, looking concerned. Sam said something to her and then gestured to me.

The nurse rounded the bed and began to pull the gauze away from the stitches on my arm.

Like clockwork, there was another knock at the door. An immaculately dressed American woman greeted me, "Miss Croft?" Behind her were two men, one holding a shoulder-mounted steadycam and another with a portable boom mic. A second woman entered as well, holding a case.

"Yes," I answered her, torn between trying to figure out what Sam had told the nurse about my arm and giving my full attention to the international media crew entering my hospital room.

I pulled the blankets over my breasts, just in case anything showed through the thin cotton.

"Set up here, Michael," the reporter told the cameraman, and pointed at the foot of the bed. He followed her instructions. The woman with the case opened it and brushed the reporter's cheeks with blusher.

"Heather Thomas," she told me, stepping away from make-up. "CNN." She held out her hand to shake, and I awkwardly took it with my other hand since the nurse was busy with the one I should have used. "I must say this is an absolute honour that you've agreed to speak to us." She turned back to Michael. "Make sure you get the whole bed in," she said as he set up the camera and began to record. She then turned back to me. "Now, you know how this goes, don't you?"

Sam answered for me. "Just better make it quick, she's not feeling that well."

Heather looked disappointed. "Of course," she said. "We won't disturb you for too long. You are?" She was looking at Sam.

"That's Nishimura's daughter," the mic operator told Heather.

Heather frowned. "I thought CNN was getting the scoop?"

"She's my best friend," I told Heather. "She was with me on Yamatai."

Heather's mouth made an 'ah' shape. "Okay, then," she said, fixing her hair as she went and stood beside Sam on the other side of the bed. "We'll just wait for cue."

For at least three minutes we all just sat awkwardly together, with Heather trying to make small talk and Sam trying to perfectly arrange her scarf.

Finally, the sound tech straightened. I could see there was a Bluetooth receiver in his ear. "In five," he said.

Heather took a breath, and then put her hand up to her own ear and switched something on. "That's right, Sarah," she said, smiling at the camera. "The world has been waiting to speak with the newly graduated archeologist who managed to discover what thousands before her couldn't – the lost island of Yamatai. I'm here with Lara Croft in Tokyo International Medical Centre where she is being treated for her injuries. Miss Croft," she looked toward me, and my heart began to pound. "How does it feel to have made such a ground-breaking discovery?"

"Surreal," I said. "I can't believe any of this is happening."

Heather pushed further. "It does sound like fiction, doesn't it? Sources say that earlier wrecks had formed a Lord of the Flies-type culture on the island. Is that how you were hurt?"

Well, that was certainly one way of describing it. "Well, Whitman—" I winced. "Sorry."

Heather feigned understanding. "I know Professor Whitman was somewhat of a mentor to you. We're sorry for your loss."

I balked at the thought of ever looking up to that ego-centric, opportunist prick, but didn't really think this exact moment was the best moment to mention it. "I heard the culture described as primal and fascinating… but what it really was like was a whole bunch of angry, violent men who wanted to punish everyone and everything for the fact they couldn't get off that island."

"So they punished you?"

Actually, I thought, I punished them. "They tried to."

At that exact moment, the nurse pulled away the dressing to replace it, displaying twenty-five fresh stitches across my arm and shoulder to the camera. Heather gasped, but I wasn't sure how much of it was real. "What an incredible survivor you must be. Were you scared?"

What a question. "Horribly."

"She was amazing," Sam interjected. "You should have seen her. I'd be dead if it wasn't for her." At that, Heather looked down at Sam as she continued. "The men on the island kidnapped me for this ritual, and Lara came across the whole island and saved me."

I looked across at her, and she smiled at me. I hadn't heard her talk that way about what had happened before; there was such admiration in her voice. She took my hand and squeezed it.

Heather looked between us. "Incredible, just incredible."

I only realized Sam's other hand was beside my thigh under the covers when she pinched me. I shrieked, "Sam!"

"Oh, Sweetie, are you in pain? Okay—" Sam turned towards the camera, "—Interview's over. She needs rest."

Heather's expression was reminiscent of a child who'd been given a biscuit and then had it taken away from her before she could eat it. She held her composure well, though.

"I'm sorry," Sam told her, actually sounding apologetic. "It's just so soon after her operation." The nurse was fussing around me as if she thought that I actually was in pain.

Heather smiled at the camera. "That concludes our introduction to Lara Croft – the prodigy archeologist to discover Yamatai. What a story!"

Michael let the camera drop. "We're clear," he said.

Heather smiled at me again as the nurse bustled them out of the room. "Pleasure to meet you, Miss Croft. We'll have to have a longer talk when you're feeling better."

I nodded mutely. I felt like I'd been caught in a tornado for five minutes and then spat out again.

"I don't suppose they're at all interested in the amazing archaeological discovery that Yamatai actually is?" I asked rhetorically.

Sam said something to the nurse, who nodded and pressed a few buttons on my IV. I only realized she'd told the nurse to up the morphine when a wave of it passed over me. Checking my other dressings briefly, the nurse then left and closed the door behind her.

While I was fighting unconsciousness, Sam dropped a package on my lap, presumably from the bag she'd hidden in the bathroom. "Here, I got you an iPad. You're not supposed to use wireless in here, but I actually don't think they can tell if you do leave it on."

"I'd be much more excited if you hadn't told the nurse to anaesthetise me."

"Well, I had to tell her something to get rid of her. Come on, open it. I'm dying to see how they use the interview."

I was too drowsy to set it up, so Sam opened the box and put it all together, unplugging the 1980s alarm clock on my bedside table to charge it. She booted it up. "What's your email password?" she asked, and I told her. "Wow." She held the screen up to show me.

I was looking at my inbox, and it was very, very full. "Eight hundred new messages," I read. "I don't suppose people just want to congratulate me?"

Sam scrolled through the list. "Hey, check it out." She showed me. "Cambridge wants to discuss a PhD candidature with you."

"Sure, I've just escaped and already they want to lock me back in an office forever."

"I know, right," Sam chuckled, flicking through the list. "Jonah got back to New Zealand in one piece."

That was good, at least.

"It's mostly journalists," she told me at last. "But if you ever feel down on yourself, you can just read some of the stuff they're saying to butter you up. Here," she imitated a British accent, "'as brave as you are beautiful'."

Despite the fact that iPad was allegedly a gift for me, Sam spent all morning on it while I half-dozed and half-listened to her chatter. It reminded me of university, with Sam splicing video in a media player and chatting to me about it while I tried desperately to make my dissertation sound professional. Later I would find snippets of Sam's monologue in my typing, because it was impossible to completely tune her out. I smiled at the memory.

When the boost of morphine finally wore off, I inspected the box that Sam's aunt had brought in. I was eating through a selection of food that I could only dimly identify when Sam looked up from lying on her stomach on the bed with the iPad. "Do you really want to go back to Croatia?"

I opened my eyes. "That's about the shape of it."

"Some archaeology thing I'd need a degree in to understand, right?" I grinned at her, and she looked back to the iPad. "Whatever, it doesn't matter why. I'm totally coming anyway. Someone has to document your heroic exploits." She said the last few words as if she were a news reporter. "You can tell me all about it on the way."

I had a moment of panic when I thought about the fact that documenting my 'heroic exploits' had nearly lead to both our deaths, but I doubted I'd find a way to convince her to stay away. It was nice to have her company, anyway, especially after everything that had happened.

"Huh," Sam said, tapping the screen. "Dad sent me an email. He never emails me."

"That's because you normally have a mobile," I pointed out. She was reading it while I was speaking.

She tapped the screen again, and I could see her eyes tracking lines of text. After a couple of seconds, one of her eyebrows twitched and I could see a cheeky smile growing on lips. "Sam…"

"You've got to see this," she said, and actually carefully threw the iPad over to my bed; some people have too much money. I neatly caught it. "Dad sent me a link. Just look at what CNN did with the footage."

I narrowed my eyes at her and then looked down at website. There was a screen-grab of Sam and I holding hands, and the way it had been taken made it look like we were gazing adoringly at each other.

So, we'd unearthed a bloody amazing archaeological discovery, complete with shrines and ancient structures and intact scripture. We'd discovered an island with more than fifty wrecked ships thought lost at sea. I'd killed dozens of people, we'd nearly been killed – some of us had been killed, and this was what CNN had to say about the discovery: "She's My Hero!" read the headline.

"What on…" I began. "What is this, the Hunger Games?"


	3. Chapter 3

I needed air, but not only did the hospital window only open a fraction, getting to the window was just as painful as getting to the bathroom was. To make matters worse the window was opposite the bathroom and I could see myself in the mirror: slumped over, ashen and towing along my IV.

"Some hero," I told my reflection.

"It's hilarious," Sam had already retrieved the iPad from my bed and was re-reading the She's My Hero! article. "It's not surprising, I guess. Gay marriage is kind of a big international issue at the moment."

"Oh, my God." I made another attempt at the window.

Sam abandoned the iPad to help me with the window, but even though I was post-op I still did a better job of forcing it than she did. We got it open another inch and then gave up.

She was standing rather close to me when we straightened, and giving me that appraising look she sometimes had when she wanted to play dress-ups. "You know," she said, stepping into toward me and putting her hands on my hips. "We should totally ham it up for them. Like in Berlin."

I rolled my eyes. "A drunken snog at 3am in some dodgy little pub is not the same as feeling you up on International television."

She shrugged. "Still, it was no big deal, was it?"

Feeling a little light-headed, I leaned against the windowsill. "It's not that at all." The whole thing was just completely ridiculous. "People have died."

She didn't looked fazed. "People die every day, Lara. You don't see it on the front of newspapers."

"But—"

"But nothing. You want people to care that you've discovered some big archeological jackpot? How many people you think care at all about archeology?"

I just stared at her. I mean, she had a point, but it was so odd to hear without that playful lilt in her voice.

"Yeah, that's right – basically zero, in the scheme of things. But if they care about you, they're going to care about what happened to you and what you found." She sounded like she was rattling off something her father would say. "You're always saying you wished people cared more about their history. Well…. Here's your chance."

I took a slow breath. "I'm not going to pretend to be giving it to you just so I can convince some form six student to choose a history major. It's so cheap."

Sam shrugged. "That's the way the world works, Sweetie. People love cheap."

"I can't do it, Sam."

She actually may have looked disappointed. I shouldn't have been that surprised: having grown up with all this media nonsense she was like a duck in water. It was some weird sociological fascination for her.

While I was laboring back to my bed, she'd slung her handbag over her shoulder. "I'm going to go get my cell and make a phone call," she said. When I queried it, she said, "My dad. I'm not calling CNN, I promise."

I looked pointedly at the bedside table where a cordless phone was charging. She narrowed her eyes at me, but there was a smile on her face. Without bothering to elaborate, she opened the door and stepped through it.

I supposed I would have to wait to find out what she was up to.

I took the iPad on my way back to my bed. While I had some peace, I could draw what I could remember of the pictures I'd see on Yamatai.

I had no idea if any of the art or altars or anything would have been preserved after the storms and fires –I hoped most of the ancient carvings and structures would remain. Whitman had been right on some level, it was interesting that even with modern technology available to them the shipwrecked men had still been finger-painting on caves and buildings. I supposed they typified the condition 'stir-crazy'. I wasn't sorry at all that I wouldn't be able to ask them personally why they'd done it.

When I was sketching the huge paintings of the transfer process from Himiko to her next vessel, I found myself inadvertently drawing Sam's hair on the woman holding the urn. I shivered. What would have happened if the ritual had been completed before I'd arrived? Would I have needed to drive that stake into Sam's heart, instead? I'd have sooner buried it in my own chest.

I stopped soon after that. It wasn't that I wasn't able to remember the detail or that I'd run out of notes, not at all. Just the thought of dragging it all out again and piecing it over detail by detail was exhausting. It didn't make sense: I should be so excited about what I'd found. In my father's wildest dreams he could never have imagined the type of discovery I had made.

The odd part was that I didn't feel anything. In fact, I felt a distinct absence of something, like a hole where my excitement should be. I didn't want to think very hard about it, not now.

I was so focused on staring at my half-finished sketch, I didn't notice that one of my pillows slipped to the side until it knocked both the empty coffee cup and the cordless phone onto the floor. I saw the whole thing happen in the corner of my eye, but when the phone hit the floor my heart still nearly leapt out of my chest.

Immediately, I was looking around for some sort of cover, somewhere I could tuck myself. Even as I cast my eyes around for somewhere I knew it was silly and irrational. Still, I felt horribly light-headed and my pulse was so loud and so strong I could hear it in my ears. Dimly, I was aware of the fact my heart monitor was alarming, and I hurriedly spun around, straining my stitches to mash buttons until it stopped.

I lay back against the bed rest, listening to see if I could hear anyone responding to the alarm. I wasn't sure how long it had happened for – hardly a second or two, surely – maybe they'd realised it was nothing and gone about their business. I hoped to the heavens they had – I didn't want anyone to see me like this.

I'd calmed down and rescued the cordless phone by the time Sam returned. As usual, she was toting about a million shopping bags. I couldn't even imagine how she'd found anywhere to shop around the hospital, but retail was some sort of sixth sense for her.

When she saw I was lying flat, she tried to be quiet until we made eye contact. "Oh, good, you're awake," she said, and dumped the bags on my legs. "I bought you a whole lot of clothes since your other ones are all back in England. It's about time you bought some new stuff, anyway." I was actually rather interested in what she'd bought, so I perked up. "And," she said in a song-song voice, producing a box as if it were some sort of treasure, "look what I got." She pressed her face against a portable camera box. It had been opened.

I rolled my eyes as she stowed it, going for the other bags. "Of course."

She held up a pair of flat-soled leather boots and some camouflage cargo pants. I liked them, of course, but I wasn't sure if I'd really need army print in Tokyo. "It's totally in at the moment," she reassured me, and laid out a selection of tops which ranged from simple and plain the way I liked them to 'edgy', as Sam put it. She'd also bought me probably all the socks and knickers in Tokyo and bras in four different sizes. "They have weird sizing here," she explained. "Don't worry, we can take them back if they don't fit."

Before she could insist I try any of them on, there was a knock on the door. "Miss Croft," a doctor said as he entered, speaking to me in a comfortingly English accent. "I'm Dr. Redman. I understand you've been in some discomfort."

For a moment I thought he might know about my freak-out, but then I realised he'd probably just seen or heard about the CNN footage.

A nurse followed him in with a fresh IV bag which she fitted while the doctor had a quick look through my chart, leaving soon afterwards as he finished. "Can you tell me where exactly the pain is?"

The pain was in my thigh where Sam pinched it, I thought. "It's hard to explain."

"Could you describe it, then?"

Sharp and pinch-like, I thought, perhaps with indents from French manicures. Sam saw my expression – or my attempt at not having one – and snickered.

"You mind if I take a look at your stitches?" he said. He was already lifting my gown up when I'd looked awkwardly over at Sam. He looked between us. "Would you like her to leave the room?" he asked me.

I looked at her. She had a completely neutral expression. "No, no, it's—I mean," I began, holding my hands up as a 'no'.

"Of course," Dr Redman said, smiling at me. "Some people prefer their partners to not be present during examinations. It's always good form to check."

My eyebrows disappeared into my hairline. Sam lost it, but managed to appear completely composed. Her eyes were watering with how much she wanted to laugh as she pulled a chair up to my bedside and took my hand. With false gravity, she said, "I'm here for you, Sweetie."

I was going to kill her later, I swear it. Rather than be bothered by my severe expression, she winked at me.

"Well, I see nothing concerning about any of these," the doctor said after he'd looked at all my wounds. "Your bloodwork is within acceptable ranges, all your organ systems are functioning and you're healing surprisingly well. Any discomfort is probably just part of the healing process."

"Does that mean I can leave?" I wasn't under any illusion I could hop straight onto another expedition, but after my little episode I really felt like I could use a night somewhere familiar. Somewhere with a lockable door.

He looked at the chart again. "Well, maybe tomorrow," he said. "Finish this bag and we'll give you a script for some tablets. You should also probably speak with the Gastroenterologist before you go, I'll make sure she comes by tonight." He flipped the chart back over and placed it the carrier on the end of the bed. "No sports for four weeks," he told me sternly, "I'm sure you've been told everything."

Well, what Sam had passed on. I nodded.

As he was leaving, he turned back to me, remembering something. "Oh, I meant to tell you: one of the nurses found your friend wandering around in the ICU by himself looking for you, I forget his name. He had some flowers, they're at reception."

Sam's grip of my hand was uncomfortably tight as she asked quickly, "Which friend?"

The doctor should his head. "The nurse said he was a foreigner, probably American. Does that ring any bells? Anyway, visitors are not allowed in either the ICU or the VIP floor without clearance, I'm sure he understands."

I felt sick. "Did the nurse tell him we're up here?"

Dr. Redman looked blankly at me. "Of course, otherwise how could we explain he can't bring the flowers himself?" When it was clear we didn't know what he was talking about, he said, "You weren't expecting a visitor, were you?" Both Sam and I shook our heads. He made a face. "Very well, I'll let security know to be on the lookout for him. Don't forget you can use the alarm." He pointed to the red button over my bed.

After he'd left, we sat in silence for a moment. "Do you know any American guys? Like, ones that would visit you in here?" She already knew the answer. "Well, maybe it's just some really sneaky journalist."

I had a really bad feeling about it, but perhaps I was just being irrational again. Sam was right, it was probably just freelance journalist or an opportunistic paparazzo hoping to get a scoop.

"He's probably just here to try and get a shot of us mauling each other," she said far too cheerfully, and put her arms around my neck.

"Give it a rest," I said sternly, but I was grinning.

"Shut up, you love it," she said, and then made a big play of leaning dramatically in towards me. "Kiss me, lover!"

I hugged her instead.


	4. Chapter 4

At bedtime, I had actually managed to drag one of the visitor chairs over to the door, jamming the spine of it underneath the handle. When I stood back to inspect my work, that was when I realised what I'd actually done. Who on earth barricades a hospital door based on a general feeling of unease? Clearly I was in the wrong sort of hospital if I felt like it was appropriate.

I slowly pushed the chair back beside my bed and sat on it, wondering if there was some sort of middle ground that would satisfy my anxiety but also not make it look like I was completely mad. Perhaps I could place it strategically so it would hinder someone running through the door and delay them arriving at our beds?

Sam was hunched over a hand mirror on her own bed, pretending to be completely engrossed in removing her eyeliner.

She saw me watching her in the mirror. She swallowed, but managed a smile. "Trying your hand at interior design?"

"Next project: Tokyo Asylum," I said wryly.

She put her mirror on the bedside table. "J-Pop celebrities get treated here, and their fans?" Sam made a 'cuckoo' motion next to her ear. "Totally crazy. I mean it."

"I know I'm probably being ridiculous." I pulled myself up on the edge of the bed and climbed slowly into it. "It might even be as harmless as some nice guy who likes archaeology and accidentally wandered into the wrong ward." I tucked myself in. "Can you reach the light?"

She made a noise that sounded like a 'yes', and felt around her table. The lights went out.

The drip in the back of my hand made it really hard to get comfortable. I kept catching it on the blankets when I moved them, and every now and then the machine would beep for what seemed like no reason. I stared into the dark ceiling, listening to the sound of distant traffic below. At least the window didn't open: it restricted the number of ways someone could get in. On the other hand, it occurred to me that that also meant there was only one way out of the room.

The heart monitor tracked an increase in my pulse.

"Lara?" I turned over towards Sam as she whispered, "Are you asleep?"

"No…" I said, and then exhaled at length. At this point, the sound of a pin drop would have me almost ready to run a hundred-metre dash.

"Can I…?"

I knew what she was asking. "Yes."

I heard the hiss of fabric as she slid out of bed and padded across the floor in her socks. I was on my side facing her and she climbed in front of me, slinging my arm over her hips. It meant my other arm didn't fit anywhere, so after some difficulty we found a place for it under her neck.

I always seemed to end up with my nose in her hair, I thought, breathing into it.

"I know it's kind of morbid," Sam mumbled, her cheek against my arm. "But I just have this, like, feeling that I could be killed over in that bed and you wouldn't know until you woke up in the morning."

What an awful thought. I imagined what it would be like to wake up and find Sam had been killed while I was asleep.

"At least this way we can die together, right?" I think she was trying to be funny.

"God, that is morbid." And yet, I found it strangely comforting.

"They'd probably make a movie about us," she said, running with the line of thought at a hundred miles an hour. "Kind of like Romeo and Juliet. Lucy Liu can play me. She's bi, you know." She paused. "Although kind of old now, and Chinese." When I didn't say anything, she continued, "Although I suppose the actress wouldn't have to be actually bi in real life. It's 'acting' after all."

"I've got an idea." She stopped talking to listen to it. "You can keep talking all night. That way I'll know that if you stop, you're dead."

A hand tickled my side, and I strained my stitches struggling against it. She did stay quiet, though, and I regretted joking about it. It was always fun listening to her when she was chatty.

I was actually drifting off when she spoke again. "Do you think if someone put a gun to my chest, they'd be able to shoot through you, as well?"

I pulled my arm out from under her neck. "That's it," I said. "I've had it with this constant worry."

I could dimly see her expression in the light coming from the monitor; she looked dismayed. I realised she probably thought I meant I'd had it with her worrying. I stroked her back reassuringly as I said, "I'm going to go and get those bloody flowers, let's see what the fuss is about."

She looked relieved. "Well, I'm coming, too."

I let her tie up my hospital gown so it best concealed everything. We staggered out into the corridor in our fuzzy hospital slippers like deer in headlights, with me towing the monitor and the IV behind me.

I didn't have too much bother making it to the reception – much less than I thought I would – but by the time I reached the desk I felt as if I could do with a good sit down. I leaned on the counter, breathless. "There are some flowers for me." I probably could have figured out how to say that in Japanese, but I was a little light-headed.

The duty nurse looked up from the computer. She smiled. "Yes, they are back here," she said and went 'back there' into what I presumed was the administration office to retrieve them. When she emerged, she was carrying an impossibly large, incredibly corporate bouquet. There were no roses, or lilies, or anything that could be considered at all romantic. Instead, they were some collection of exotic flowers curled around a trellis. The basket underneath contained a selection of fresh fruit. There wasn't even a 'Get Well Soon' balloon.

"Dad gets stuff like this from investors," Sam remarked, inspecting one of the flowers. "You think they're poisonous?"

The nurse looked a little alarmed, but said nothing.

I picked out a sky blue envelope from where it was tucked in the fruit. There was a sticker on the back. "Interflora," I read. "He was probably just a delivery man." For a moment I felt enormously relieved.

"Isn't it strange he wasn't Japanese?"

So much for being comforting, I thought. I opened the envelope. There was some sort of corporate logo embossed on the paper the message was printed on, but I didn't recognise it. I read the message aloud to Sam.

"Miss Croft,

We would like to arrange a meeting with you to discuss an exciting but confidential project we are currently working on. Please contact us at your earliest convenience. The details are below."

Sam made a face. "That sounds like a sales pitch. Who sent it?"

I looked at the contact details. "It actually doesn't say."

I let her take the letter from me and examine it herself. "Well, at least it doesn't say, 'I'm coming to kill you, ha ha ha haaa'." She made me laugh again, which once again hurt my stomach. "Are you going to call them?" She lifted the basket up and took a step back toward our room.

I pressed my lips together, pushing away from where I had been leaning on the counter top. To tell the truth, I was actually rather curious. "I'm not sure. Perhaps."

Back in the room, she set the basket on the chair beside my bed and helped me back into it. Shrugging off her dressing gown, she kneeled on the bed and crawled over my legs, inching up next to me and slipping under the blanket.

She had no reason to still be scared, I thought as she looped my arm over her head and settled in the crook of my arm. I didn't really mind at all – she had always been very touchy-feely and it was one of the things I liked about her— but she'd never slept in bed with me without a reason. This time it was doubly awkward because her cheek was against one of my breasts and I couldn't possibly believe she hadn't noticed.

I must have been stiff, because half-sat up. "This is okay, isn't it?" The green light from the heart monitor lit her face again. She'd phrased the question very casually, but she was waiting with bated breath for my answer. I saw her throat bob as she swallowed.

Smiling faintly, I hugged her head back down with the arm that was around her. "It's fine," I said. "The bed's just rather small, that's all."

I felt her arm drape across my waist as she relaxed into me. "Home tomorrow," she murmured.

Home, I thought. Sam hadn't lived for any length of time in Japan since she was eighteen, but I assumed by 'home' she meant her father's estate.

The street the property was on was jokingly referred to as 'The Gauntlet' because of all the double and triple-parked cars full of a mixture of private security, crazed fans and the occasional paparazzi. I wasn't particularly looking forward to 'running' it, but I was certain Sam and her family wouldn't let me sneak out of hospital without any sort of fanfare.

I decided I could weather the attention because Mr. Nishimura had all of the artefacts I'd recovered stored in one of the safes on his property, and I had to be responsible and do something with them.

Focusing on the memory of how triumphant I'd felt when I'd reached them, I tried to work up some sort of excitement about the fact that I, Lara Croft, had been the one to discover them. I just felt exhausted at the thought of dealing with them again.

My father would have been so disappointed if he knew how much I just wanted to leave them in the safe. Roth wouldn't have let me get away with it, either. He'd always known exactly the right thing to say to set me straight. The prospect of organizing my own expeditions and running them all myself was horribly daunting; Roth's wisdom was always the one thing that held everything together, including me.

I hugged Sam closer to me and tried in vain to get some sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

"Would you describe her recovery as 'miraculous', Dr. Redman?" Sam was interviewing him over the reception counter as he attempted to finish the discharge paperwork. She had her new toy pointed directly at his face.

He gave her a look which suggested she should let him get on with his job. "I would describe her as still recovering," he said pointedly. He had his briefcase next to him; I supposed it was the end of his shift.

"And this," Sam said, spinning around toward me and at the LCD screen. "Is the hero herself, finally out of bed."

I had grown well accustomed to Sam communicating with me via a camera during the years of our friendship. Normally she would save the files in some folder on her laptop and never look at them again, but I had a feeling this time she might end up actually cutting this tape and passing it on to her father.

It hadn't stopped all morning – at least her old camera only had an hour or two of battery power.

"Show us your battle scars," she said, reaching forward and lifting the corner of my t-shirt. Resistance had always been futile with her, so I carefully peeled back some of a tape and let her hold the camera so she could film the wound and the surgical scars around it. "It goes all the way through to her back," Sam continued, rounding me and peeking under the gauze on my back. She dropped the camera voice for a moment. "Wow, that one looks kind of infected."

Dr. Redman didn't even look up from his papers. "Not anymore," he said and then handed me handed me a script. I didn't recognize any of the kanji on it at all. "Antibiotics," he said. "Three times a day before food, and make sure you call in if anything changes at all."

"And here's her arm," Sam said, poking the camera under the dressing. "How many stitches is that?"

"I've lost count." I didn't feel much like counting, either; not having a steady stream of morphine trickling into me meant that I certainly had more energy. However, it also meant I had a lot more pain and it was distracting. I wondered again why I'd refused painkillers.

"I assume your father has arranged transport?" Dr. Redman was speaking to Sam, trying to engage her outside the LCD window.

He wasn't successful. "Yeah, there's a driver downstairs," Sam said, eyes still on the screen.

He nodded, and then bent down to collect his briefcase and smiled to us as he left.

Sam had lost her fight to have me carted out of the hospital in a wheelchair ("It would look so dramatic!"), but she brought it up several times again on my slow walk through emergency on the way out.

I was rather glad I hadn't been wheeled out, because I was already a spectacle.

People were looking at me, I discovered. Sick people were disregarding their illness and injuries to watch me leave. As I passed the triage window, even the nurses were trying to appear nonchalant, managing only glances up from whatever they were doing.

It was horribly unnerving.

In the waiting area, the twenty-four hour news channel was playing on a wall-mounted TV. I only glanced at it, but double-took when I saw the picture in the corner of the screen beside the reporter. It looked like Sam and I lying in bed together, half-asleep.

I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at it.

Sam fidgeted uncomfortably next to me. "Come on, let's go."

I didn't budge. "That's the photo your aunt took," I realised aloud.

"Oh, yeah." Sam feigned surprise, but I saw right through it.

I looked sharply at her. "You knew," I accused.

"She didn't say exactly what they were going to do with it." She took my hand. "Come on, Lara. It's no big deal. Remember that in the end it's about—"

"Sam, no," I told her, feeling like I might just walk over to the wall and call my own taxi. "Just no, alright? There's this thing called consent."

She looked uncomfortably at all the people watching us. "Can we not do this here?" she whispered. "It's Japan."

I would probably have yanked my hand away from her and stormed off if not for that very point. Instead, I gave her a very hard stare. "You've never been like this with footage," I said quietly to her. "Don't start with it."

She looked properly chastised. "I just thought—"

"Just ask me, okay?"

She nodded mutely.

I marched out the sliding doors as briskly as I could given my injuries, too distracted by our rare argument to prepare myself for what awaited us outside.

Various groups of journalists and reporters had obviously been waiting patiently in the streets around the building for us to exit. When they saw us, they immediately converged on us. We were mobbed.

I pushed Sam behind me out of reflex, feeling the air leave my lungs. There were people all around me, microphones pointed at my face and people yelling. Their voices all blended together. There must have been a hundred people of all different nationalities shouting my name. I looked around for a way to escape, but couldn't see anything for all the cameras flashing.

I was completely paralysed. I couldn't even breathe. My pulse in my ears rose in volume until it drowned everything out.

Before I could actually pass out, I heard whistles. Two men in security uniforms moved through the crowd, physically pushing people back. Through the gap I could see a car waiting for us like a life raft in the sea of people.

Soon afterwards, there was an announcement over the P.A. outside the hospital. "Please be aware this is an Emergency department and large numbers of people block the passage of ambulances. Please immediately clear the area and allow vehicles through." It repeated in Japanese.

One of the men with the whistles gestured at as to come forward. "Get in the car," he said in Japanese to Sam. "They will leave when you do."

She pushed me forwards; it was the only reason I was able to move.

Through the pulsating crowd, I saw a single blond figure standing still on the stairs of the opposite building. He stood out from all the reporters, wearing light stonewash jeans and red flannelette. When he saw me looking, he raised whatever drink he had opened as if toasting me. On the hand he was holding the drink with I could see amateur knuckle tattoos, the type penned in prisons the world over. He seemed casual enough, but his total confidence coupled with the fact that he'd intended that I see him made him dangerous to me. I wondered if he were the American that Dr. Redman had mentioned.

From this close, I could shoot him square in the head with a single bullet.

I looked around me at the waists of the security guards but didn't see anything resembling a firearm—probably for the best.

"That's him," I said to Sam as we reached the car, and she twisted, looking over towards where I had indicated.

"He looks like something out of a nineties Western," she shouted to me, and to my horror, held up the video camera and shot a few seconds of him.

I pulled her arm down. "Are you serious? You're going to take footage of someone like that? That's how people get killed."

She helped me into the car. As soon as the door shut, she filmed all the faces crouched by the window. "It's not like we filmed him killing someone," she said, and then closed the screen and turned the camera off. The driver was mashing the horn, and eventually the car was able to take off away from the centre.

"We're alive," I said, feeling it odd I was comparing moving through a media scrum to actually having left the Yamatai alive and breathing. "Why would anyone choose a life of this?"

"It'll calm down," Sam said. "This always happens when a story first breaks."

I hoped she was right, because it was awful.

As we drove through traffic I was expecting to be able to relax, but I couldn't think about anything except that man. "What kind of business do you think he's in?"

Sam shrugged, guessing who I was talking about. "Dad says that the richer people are, the worse they dress. It's like some rule that once you pass the billion dollar mark, it no longer becomes important to wear a suit."

"I don't think he runs the company," I decided. He was confident, but he was also just delivering a message. "But who on earth hires someone like that to make appointments?"

"I think you should call the number on the card," Sam said, reaching into her jacket and giving me her iPhone.

I unlocked it, but couldn't dial the number. I was still breathless from having had the life squeezed out of me by a hundred people. "Later," I told her, and gave the phone back. "Can I have the camera?"

"Don't delete anything," she said. "I'll ask if I want to hand something over, I promise."

I was distracted trying to figure out how to pause the footage and zoom in on a particular area, so I didn't answer her. Sam had already figured all that out and showed me.

We watched the three seconds she had of the man. Zoomed in, he looked early forties, perhaps. He was clean-shaven which suggested he did actually take his job somewhat seriously. All that was contradicted by the fact that when we looked at what he was drinking, it turned out he was drinking beer at ten am on a weekday morning and in public.

"Do you think he's been hired to kill you and the flowers were all a ruse?" Sam asked.

"Well, I didn't until now." I thought on it. "But he probably would have done it already. He knew where we were."

"Maybe he, like, wants to play with you a bit before—"

That harked back to when I was first captured by the Solarii on the island, so I stopped her. "I don't want to think about it." I reached into her jacket and took her phone back. "It's a mobile number, I'll just send a text."

Although our bags would be couriered and the basket of flowers and fruit was with them, I'd kept the envelope. I took it out of the pocket of my cargo pants and unfolded it. I tapped the number into Sam's mobile, and then was presented with the empty message field. "What should I say?"

Sam shook her head. "I don't know. I guess there's a slim possibility it could actually be a really good offer, so you don't want to go telling them to leave you alone just yet."

I bit my lip. Eventually I managed to come up with: "Before I speak to you, please send me a full prospectus for your project include all parties involved. – LC" I read it out to Sam. "Does that sound rude?"

She tilted the phone toward her to look for herself. "Nah, it's more direct than rude."

No sooner had I clicked 'send' then Sam's phone began to ring. My hand shook so much I nearly dropped it on the floor of the car.

"Aren't you going to answer it?" Sam asked me, clearly not going to answer it herself.

With every fibre of my being I didn't want to, and I was feeling lightheaded again. My wound throbbed with the pounding of my heart. However, I also didn't want to lie awake in bed that night wondering if I were going crazy.

I swiped the screen and lifted the phone to my ear. "Lara Croft," I answered, trying to sound calm and professional.

"Just the lady I was looking for." It was a deep southern accent, straight out of the Bible Belt. My throat closed over as if I could actually feel him strangling me. Because I was silent, he continued, "The project is strictly confidential – we don't want to distribute anything in writing yet, not with the media crawling all over you like ants. Where can I meet you?"

I could barely keep my voice even. "You really think I'd agree to meet someone I don't know?"

"I think you'll want to hear what we have to offer you."

At that moment, all I wanted to do was find somewhere very remote and very quiet to hide forever. Sam was stroking my shoulder. "Who's we? You haven't even told me who you are."

"Details later," he said. "Let's meet up."

"That's not going to happen," I said.

"You think I'm going to hurt you?" He sounded amused, and that made me shake even more violently.

"I think I've killed a lot of men like you, and you'd better be sure I'd have a shot at defending myself."

He was amused. "Well, I ain't killed any girls like you. You won't be defending yourself against anything more than a beautiful gourmet meal."

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't hold the phone properly. The conversation had to end before I wasn't able to carry it on anymore. "Send me a prospectus and tell me who you are or forget about it," I said at the phone, and then hung up and turned it off.

Sam looked just as shaken as I did. I wiped my palms on my pants, trying to draw a deep breath. I didn't even know why I was so unnerved by that call. He was just a big, creepy guy – God knows I'd bested enough of them that I shouldn't be threatened by him. Regardless, I was. I kept imagining conversations in my head that ended in me needing to kill him or needing to escape.

"I wonder how quickly I'm allowed to fly," I thought aloud. I couldn't get out of this country fast enough. Maybe I could plane-hop and lose the bulk of the journalists and the creepy American en route.

Sam didn't look that enthusiastic about my question. "Dad will probably be a bit insulted if we don't stay at least for a few days, and it's totally secure there." She leaned back in the seat, looking out the window. "I would kind of feel a bit guilty if he didn't get a good feature interview with you. He put a lot of money into that expedition." After some thought, she turned quickly back to me with her face lit up. "You know, I can probably convince Dad to let me do the interview. He might even let me cut it, as well."

That got my attention. "Really?"

She shrugged. "I mean, there would have to be proper camera and sound techs there, too. But we can ask."

It was the first comforting thing that had happened all morning, and it almost made up for the sea of people and the cryptic American. I hadn't even realised how much I was dreading being interviewed by a stranger on international television until I found out I may not even have to worry about it.

"I hate this media rubbish," I told her.

She smiled, reaching over and taking my hand. "I know," she said, holding it. "I'm sorry it kind of comes with the money."

As much as I loved to have her with me and didn't begrudge her a successful career, I wished there was an alternative way of funding my expeditions.


	6. Chapter 6

I'd never asked Roth or Whitman exactly what the expedition had cost, but I knew roughly how much it probably was. Between stipends, salaries, equipment, insurance, exploration licenses… well, the costs were endless. I suppose if for some reason I really couldn't find anyone to fund exploration that I thought was essential I could always dip into the Croft trust. That was an absolute last resort, though, because that would make me Daddy's little trust fund archeologist who can't write a funding submission like a big girl. It would overshadow any findings I might make, and I didn't want other professionals to think that my proposals didn't have enough merit to get monetary support by themselves.

There was plenty of money swishing around in the industry so that I should never need to use my family's, and I just also happened to have a best friend whose father could look at everything and see dollar signs.

Sam was right, though, external support meant I had to put up with the real cost of funding: pandering to the funder's motive for giving me money. In this case, it was making me into a figure of speculation.

Now, every news channel was either analyzing in high detail or commenting on other channels' analysis of my private life. I tried to decide if I thought that was better or worse than the industry thinking I was Daddy's Little Archeologist… but I couldn't think clearly. My thoughts were a tangle, and between that and my throbbing stomach and stiff joints I just wanted to find an 'off' switch.

It was a shock when we pulled in through Sam's father's gate; I had expected The Gauntlet would be as bad as the scrum outside the hospital. I hadn't even noticed it!

When I looked over at Sam to comment, I discovered the reason she'd been silent was because she'd drifted off. It made me smile. I toyed with the idea of catching her at her own game and taking a photo of her but decided not to.

The driver quickly woke her up anyway. "Welcome home," he said as he pulled outside the front doors. Sam stirred and rubbed her eyes. When she realized she had been asleep, she quickly looked over at me.

I smirked at her.

She gave me a mock glare and lifted her handbag to put it on her lap. I got straight out of the car, but Sam waited for the driver to open her door. I'd forgotten that was generally how it worked.

When I straightened and my stomach pulled taut again, I had to put a hand to it. I must have been wincing, because Sam said, "I told you you should have let them give you that Codeine script."

I waved my other hand dismissively. It was nowhere near as bad as it had been when it was still bleeding on Yamatai – I could barely manage to stay conscious through that pain. This was alright. I didn't fancy taking anything that would make my brain any foggier than it already felt anyway, so I would have to manage.

As we walked up the short staircase, I noticed our bags had already arrived from the hospital and were waiting for us by the door. With some difficulty I managed to lift mine out of the bunch, full of clothes Sam had bought me.

The door was opened for us by another staff member, the Nishimura housekeeper. It was nice to be so cheerfully greeted every time we entered, but I could never get used to the idea of having staff. Sam hardly even noticed her, telling me about some renovations her father was thinking of making to the house.

Sam's father, just like Sam's grandmother, took great pride in his heritage and lived in a huge but otherwise traditional Japanese house. That meant that you could never tell what the interior of the house was going to look like because they'd constantly be moving the partitions around. The furniture was never in the same place and you had to always be very quiet because what happened down one end of the house could be clearly heard at the other. I'd lived most of my life in old stone buildings where you couldn't hear someone shouting in the kitchen from the bedroom, so I was never comfortable at Sam's father's house. The only place that was actually soundproof was the bathroom, and that was actually across an outdoor balcony in almost a separate building.

I did like all of the artwork that was hung on various walls, though, and their family shrine had the most beautiful singing bowls that were a thousand years old. I always agonized over not really being allowed to touch them, because my impulse was always to pick them up and turn them over in my hands.

Sam went straight to part of the house used for storing furniture. I followed her, wondering how she automatically knew where it was even though she'd not been to her father's house in at least a year. She took a couple of bedrolls and went off to decide where she would set up the bedroom. "You can put your clothes in one of the drawers in my cupboard," she told me as she pulled the partitions around in the next area. "I'm pretty sure there's space in one of them."

The cupboard was back in the storage room, so I labored back in there and opened it up to face the eight drawers. I slid open one that was full of winter clothes and recognised the coat that Sam used to wear everyday in first year uni. I took it out and held it up just to look at it. So many memories, I thought, and unexpectedly felt tearful. I blotted my eyes on my sleeve and put it back, opening another drawer.

This one was only half-full, so pushed the contents of it to one side with the intention of fitting my own clothes in bedside Sam's. My fingers brushed something solid, and before I realised what I was doing, I was holding it up in front of me.

It was a bright pink vibrator.

I stared at it, horrified. It had an anime-style smiley face on it, and cheerfully boasted in cartoon print around its base, "Let's play together in the bath, I'm waterproof!"

I hurriedly hid it back in the drawer, peeking through the sliding doors to see if Sam had noticed. I couldn't see her at all, but I could hear furniture being moved.

Oh, my God. I mean, of course Sam was, well, Sam. She'd never been particularly shy about her high libido but I'd always… Well, I don't know what I'd always. Of course she wouldn't always use other people to help her with that. It was one thing to sort of assume what happened and to have actual hard evidence of how she got off when she wasn't shagging random men.

I put my face in my hands. Now, on top of this creepy American, the media following me around like a celebrity and everything that happened on Yamatai I had to imagine my friend masturbating in her bathtub.

"Bring on the codeine," I murmured to myself, stuffing my clothes into the space I'd created in the drawer.

"Yoko wants to know if you want something to eat," Sam called, not having heard me. "I asked her for those thick udon things she makes from scratch."

Leaving the storage room, I found her in the next area. "I'm not really hungry," I admitted.

"Oh, yeah, your stomach," she said, as if she'd forgotten. "It'll take her like an hour or two to make the noodles anyway. You want to have a bath? Dad just renovated the bathroom so it looks like a bathhouse."

The word was like a punch in my stomach. All I could think of was the cheerful vibrator. I knew I was blushing, but my blush must have been quite dramatic because Sam stopped dragging the low table across the floor and stared at me. "Sweetie, are you okay? You look…" she came over to me, putting a gentle hand on my back. "You look really sick. Maybe we should take you back to hospital."

I shook my head lightly. "Just had a moment, that's all."

It was a really uncomfortable feeling looking at her and knowing what she did. You never really want to think of your friends like that, you want to put a great bloody wall between that part of them and where you fit in. I had always rather thought of her as the sister I never had. She was practically family and now I was standing next to her looking are her pretty face and thinking about how many people had kissed it. Well, I had kissed it a couple of years ago. I wasn't really sure exactly how Sam thought of herself because I knew she'd had a couple of threesomes, but I hadn't. I'd had boyfriends.

God, and what the bloody telly would have to say about what I was thinking if they knew.

I wanted to reach up to my head and claw at it. I was going mad, I thought. Everything that has happened to me has actually driven me insane.

Sam still looked worried. "Maybe you should come and lie down."

I let her lead me over to where she'd laid out the beds, and I let her help me lower myself onto the bed. As she was doing it, her iPhone fell out of her jacket.

"Shit!" She abandoned me to chase it across the floor. Picking it up, she checked it to make sure it wasn't cracked and in the process automatically turned it on. It beeped, and then its beeps were interrupted by beeps.

Sam glanced up at me. "Uh, is this a bad time to mention there's fourteen messages?"

I lay back against the flat pillow. It wasn't very comfortable. "All from the American?"

She tabbed through them. "Well, there's also one from my Dad saying he'll be home at nine."

I made a resigned noise. "I don't suppose any of the messages include a link to a prospectus?"

She kept looking. As she was reading, I saw her take a deep breath. "He knows you want to go to Croatia."

"What?" I tried to sit up suddenly, and pulled my stitches. "How on earth would he know that?"

She shook her head as she kept reading. "He doesn't say. Just that they're doing some Ocean exploration in an undisclosed location and believe that you could be the expedition lead they're looking for."

That was a concern, because that was exactly what I had been thinking I would do in the Croatian isles. I hadn't told anyone that, though. Not even Sam knew.

"So he's in exploration." Suddenly, he didn't seem so creepy. "It could actually be a proper sponsorship."

Sam's expression could have belonged to a lost puppy. "But we're happy to keep sponsoring you," she said. "You don't need to talk to this guy." She handed the phone to me and I read over the messages myself. "What are you doing in Croatia, anyway?"

"Well, I've found one lost island. Maybe I should look for other lost places."

"What, like Atlantis?" she was joking. When I didn't laugh and correct her, a huge grin grew on her face. "Oh, my God, really? I got it right?" She made to high-five me. "Gold star for the camera girl!"

I let her slap my hand in victory. "No one's tried around there yet. Or at least, I didn't know they had started."

"Well, for something like that, Dad would totally be up for paying for it. Especially after you actually found Yamatai. This is going to be so awesome."

I kept my mouth shut, but I was really getting excited about the idea of actually being head-hunted for sponsorship. I'd have something new to keep me busy while I sorted my blasted head out.

Maybe I would agree to meet with this American after all, but I wasn't sure how to do it without hurting Sam's feelings. It felt absolutely awful to think of leaving her out of something, but she'd take it personally if I refused her family's money. This man's offer might not even be a good one, so there was no reason to upset her unnecessarily. But God, no media following me around; it sounded like a dream come true.

I would have to somehow meet him without her finding out.


	7. Chapter 7

I had never realised how much time Sam and I really spent together until I needed three minutes without her.

She had announced that she was going to take care of me until I was feeling better, reasoning that it was completely her fault I was torn up anyway. That wasn't the truth at all, actually. I'd be bleeding badly well before I'd needed to rescue her.

As the residual morphine slowly wore completely off, I discovered there were a whole lot of places I didn't even know had been cut. My left calf was really throbbing, and when I rolled up my cargo pants, I saw a series of deep bite marks that I'd forgotten about. Everywhere that hadn't been covered by cloth felt hot as if I had bad case of sunburn, but it was just hundreds of scrapes, scratches and cuts.

"You should really keep them clean," Sam told me, lifting my ponytail and peering down the back of my t-shirt. "Maybe we should put plasters on them."

"I'd empty my bank account buying enough of them." I lowered myself back into the bed she'd laid out again.

Sam helped me. "Probably for the best," she conceded. "Can you imagine taking them all off again? Youch!" Sitting cross-legged next to me, she considered my arms. "I can't believe you're taking it so well."

"I am?" I was lying in bed feeling sorry for myself, that didn't seem like 'taking it well'.

"I mean, I got lemon juice in a paper cut a few weeks back." I smiled at the image as she continued. "I think I woke up the dead." She looked quickly at me after making a reference to death, guilt apparent. It hurt to be reminded about everyone, but I wasn't going to make an issue of it. When it came to Foot in Mouth Disease, Sam was just as suited to be Queen as she was on Yamatai.

"Yeah," she tried to move the conversation along, "I'd be asking the doctors for everything that it's legal for them to prescribe."

"I have everything I need." It was true, but I hadn't entirely planned for it to sound so sweet. I immediately felt uncomfortable when I thought about the fact that it rather bordered on romantic. And now the protagonists kiss, I thought. I glanced at her lips and went red again. This was absolute rubbish; maybe the script I really needed was some anti-psychotics.

She had been smiling warmly at me, but looked stricken again when my face flushed. "My dad has this doctor that visits," she said. "Perhaps we can get him to come and write you something."

I shook my head, trying some slow breathing to get the blood out of my cheeks. "It's nothing, probably just from the morphine wearing off." I changed the subject. "I could really do with some tea, if you're offering."

Her face lit up. "Sure, is green okay? Yoko always has heaps."

An idea occurred to me. "I don't suppose I could have Builder's?"

Sam made a face. "Probably not, I'll ask but I know Dad doesn't really like it." Taking a deep breath, she yelled, "Yoko, do we have any English tea?" I always found it interesting to hear her swapping between English and Japanese.

Yoko appeared beside the partition, very polite but obviously not appreciating being yelled to. In some respects Sam wasn't at all Japanese, for all she could speak the language. Yoko confirmed what I already suspected, that there wasn't any in the house. "I can go and buy some later," she offered. "But I'm cooking your noodles now."

Sam looked at me. I made a show of looking stoic. "It's okay, I can't wait."

I already knew what she'd do. "No, the local supermarket has black tea. It's not Tetley's but it'll probably taste okay." She pushed herself off the floor. "If you think you'll be okay I'll just run down there and grab some."

I thanked her and then moved on to the next item in my plan. "Do you have Reyes' number in your new phone?"

She nodded. "Her old one, anyway. She might have kept the number." Taking her phone of out her jacket, she handed it to me. "I'll get you one while I'm down there."

She made towards the door and I could hear her pull her ankle boots on. "Back soon!" she called.

I waited until I could hear the mechanics of the gate opening and then quickly tabbed past Reyes' number and through the call register on Sam's phone. For a moment I just stared at the American's number. I could leave it, I thought, Sam's family would pay for whatever I wanted to do now that I'd found Yamatai. I was so stuck in a state of indecision about it and my thoughts were going around in such circles, I just bit the bullet. I selected the number and held it to my ear.

It only rang once. "You really make a man wait," said his voice.

"You're looking for Atlantis," I accused him. "Who told you about where I was going?"

"Hey, hey," he tried to calm me. "Let's just say a little bird told me told me you were on your way to Croatia."

Jonah, I thought. Well, both of them seemed to be in the same business, so perhaps they'd crossed paths. "What's your proposal?"

"Come meet me. I'll introduce you to my boss."

I imagined some slick mafia-style suit. I wondered if his boss was Japanese. "That's impossible. If you'd turn on the telly you'd see that I'm laid up at the moment."

That silenced him for a few moments. "You'll get a video call in a couple of minutes. You'd better answer it." He hung up.

I looked at the tiny screen of the iPhone, and then across to where Sam had left the iPad. Ignoring my stiff body, I crawled over to it and popped out the SIM card. I swapped it with the SIM card in Sam's iPhone and had the app store up to download something that could record calls when the call came through.

"Come on, come on…" I told the iPad, staring at the progress bar. In the end, I just had to answer the call before I could install the app.

FaceTime popped up, and I found myself looking at the head and shoulders of a professional blond woman. For a moment I was confused, until I realised this must be his boss. I rather liked that it wasn't a man.

God, she was beautiful though. "Miss Croft," she said, her perfectly sculpted lips and sharp jaw moving only slightly. "It's a pleasure to meet you, so to speak." She had an American accent, too, but it wasn't southern like the man's.

The neckline of her sky-blue shirt plunged a completely appropriate amount for an office. To counteract the appropriateness of her neckline, she had a necklace on that attracted the eyes and dipped directly into her cleavage.

She couldn't have been more than mid-thirties, I thought, but there was no question about how she became a CEO. She was really attractive, and she knew it.

"Allow me to introduce myself." She inclined her head slightly. Every movement she made was so confident, so professional. "Jacqueline Natla. Founder and CEO of Natla Technologies."

I recognised the corporate logo behind her as the same one from the embossed letter in the flowers. I'd never heard of her, though. "Are you new to the industry?" I asked her.

She chuckled. "Oh, nothing could be further from the truth." She smiled slightly at me. "Let's just say I prefer to keep everything about my research strictly confidential. Something I think you'll like about the way our arrangement will work."

I liked her already. "We don't have an arrangement yet," I said, perhaps redundantly. "And you haven't exactly made it clear why you want a fresh graduate to be a partner in your million-dollar exploration."

Her smile made my stomach flutter. "I've been watching you." I should have been alarmed by that, but I couldn't stop staring at her. She might as well have been swinging a pendulum in front of my eyes. "Besides," she finally took her eyes from mine, and it was a relief. "If you're anything like your mother and father, I have absolutely nothing to be concerned about."

It was a shock—she seemed so young. "You knew my family?"

She smiled, but didn't answer my question. "You'll be lead. I'll give you an accountant and a project manager for all the details if you wish. We also have a dedicated team of labourers and engineers. All costs are covered and we'll pay you a very generous salary." She let that sentence hang in the air for a moment, once again watching me. "And Lara," she said, enunciating my name in a way that made my heart race. "There's one detail that I just know you'll appreciate."

"Oh?" I managed to force out.

"No cameras—anywhere. All my staff sign strict confidentiality agreements."

Well, if I'd had a contract in front of me at that second, you can bet I'd have signed my life away on the dotted line. Just the thought of not having to worry about how I was going to get from A to B without journalists bothering me was enough to sell me on her offer. But going back to being basically anonymous without people speculating on who I was shagging – well, it seemed too good to be true.

"What's the catch?" I asked her.

"No catch," she said easily. "I just expect results."

It really was too good to be true. "I need to think about it," I decided. "You may have noticed I'm not in peak form just now."

"You look good to me."

I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. My blush returned. God, this woman.

She gave me ample time to flounder with that compliment before she spoke again. "Don't discuss my offer with anyone," she instructed. "You can call Larson when you're ready to proceed."

Larson, I thought. That must be the American.

Before she hung up, I spoke up. "Are you really looking for Atlantis?"

She smiled knowingly at me. "I've already found it."

I gaped at her.

There was absolutely no way I could refuse to be part of this, and her smile suggested she already knew my answer. "I'll be waiting for your call," she said, and then hung up.

I sat staring at the screen for several minutes, and it wasn't until I heard Sam's footsteps on the path that I snapped back to reality. "Shit!" I hissed to myself, frantically trying to switch the SIMs again before Sam returned.

I hadn't made it back to the bed before Sam trotted in, holding a box of black tea and Apple bag. She didn't even notice I was out of the bed. "You should see the people waiting outside!" she told me. "I practically had a flash mob following me around the supermarket." She wasn't relaying her experience like it was anything terrible at all. I would have absolutely hated it, and it really illustrated a big difference between us.

"Is this okay?" she asked, showing me the tea.

It had some obscure Kanji on it that I pretended to read. I nodded. She grinned and passed me the Apple box. "Here," she said, and then reached into her jacket and gave me a SIM pack, too. "It's a new number, I hope that's okay."

Since my old number probably had a full voicemail and a billion texts waiting, I welcomed a completely new one. I nodded.

"I'll put it together for you after I give Yoko the tea," she told me, rushing off to find the housekeeper. "You just stay in bed!"

I wasn't in bed, though. I sighed, staring at the box in my hands. For the first time in our entire friendship, I was going to keep a secret from her. She didn't even know – she just busy running around for me. My stomach hurt again.

She came back. "Your tea will be ready in a minute," she said. "So, how is she?"

I looked up quizzically at her, for a second terrified she must just somehow know who I'd just spoken to. I realised my mistake when she frowned at me. "Reyes. You said you were—"

"—oh, oh, right." I interrupted her, feeling awful. "I didn't manage to speak to her."

Sam lowered herself to the floor and crawled over to me, taking the Apple box. "I guess she got a new number, too," she said, clearly not suspecting anything. I watched her pull the box open and peel the screen cover off my new phone, feeling like absolutely the worst person in the world. I totally adored Sam, why was I keeping this from her? Wouldn't it be worse if she found out later than if I told her now?

"Come here," I told her, beckoning her closer.

She looked up from the phone.

"I'm not feeling that good," I told her. "I could use, I don't know…" I actually didn't know.

She grinned and put the box on the floor. "Okay." She scooted right up behind me and wrapped her arms around my middle, carefully avoiding the wound. "Does this hurt?"

"Not as much as it helps," I said quietly, leaning back against her. She pressed her cheek against the side of my head. I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, trying to relax.

I only opened them again when Yoko arrived with my tea, placing it very carefully beside me without looking at us at all. It was her averted eyes that made me wonder what this must look like. I didn't think we'd crossed any sort of line, but on some level I recognised that we were a lot more physical than other friends I'd had. I used to attribute it to Sam being part Japanese – Japanese girls were always holding each other's hands. What I couldn't ignore was that Yoko was Japanese and she clearly thought we were doing something that she should give us privacy for.

I wondered what Roth would have had to say about the whole thing. He was pretty easy going about many issues but in this respect I didn't know how much of him was still a marine. Had been, I corrected myself, he had been easy going.

I closed my eyes over the tears forming in them. I had no idea what to do, whether to ignore everything and whether it was completely normal to be a total mess after an ordeal like I'd had on Yamatai. I just had no idea what I thought, or what I wanted, or anything, and on top of that a zillion people probably had their cameras pointed directly at the house, waiting for me to embarrass myself. I'd have pulled the covers over my head and slept for a year if I thought I could.

"Oh, Sweetie, is it that bad?" Sam had noticed my tears. She hugged me more tightly, and I cried silently with the back of my head resting against her collarbones. "Maybe we should call Dad."

"No," I told her. "No, it's just—" I tried to explain without actually explaining, "—I am sore, but it's not that."

"Oh," she said quietly, and kissed my temple. That made me cry even more. She had nothing to say about Roth, or whatever she guessed I was upset about. I felt awfully guilty letting her assume that it was only Roth's death that was upsetting me, because I did miss him, awfully. But there was so much more than that.

"I feel like I'm going mad," I said honestly. And yet, someone was going to trust me to lead an expedition into the most famous lost city in all the history books. I didn't feel fit to run my own life, let alone something as important as this.

"I know how that feels," Sam said beside my ear, and then changed the subject. "Can you smell that? Lunch is nearly ready. You sure you're not hungry?"

I wasn't sure about anything.


	8. Chapter 8

A month ago I used to tease Sam for talking about spirits and gods and all that nonsense. I hadn't even really had time to think about the implications of what happened on Yamatai in that regard, but events in the week following me leaving the hospital safely proved the existence of karma.

Sam could not have taken better care of me. I'm certain I could not have paid anyone to be as attentive as she was.

Mr. Nishimura did, in fact, agree to Sam doing the interview with me, but only because his daughter was so bloody stubborn about it. She didn't stand up to him that often, but within the space of a single dinner, she'd convinced him to not only hand the camera over where I was concerned, but to also wait a couple of weeks before doing a feature on me.

He was never really one for any sort of facial expressions beyond 'filthy rich', but I thought I saw a measure of gruffness when he told her that she would have to be the one to tell her uncle and aunt why their stocks were down the following day. "It may not be such a bad idea, anyway," he eventually granted, after several hours of brooding silently by the shrine. "We will have more time to collect footage and more time to interview other people about Lara and Yamatai." He did send Sam to go and make a statement to the media outside the house to stop camping there, however.

In one way, all of this was a huge relief. In another, it compounded my guilt about doing business deals behind Sam's back. Not only Sam's back, now, I realised. Mr. Nishimura had been exceedingly generous to allow me some time out, because part of my contract did stipulate that I needed to be available for interviews at his channels' digression.

Between my guilt and how sore I was, I slept rather poorly most nights.

Larson had somehow obtained my email address, and so every morning when I woke up I was faced with another prompt about signing the contract. In the end, I told him I'd do it and scribbled on the screen with a fingertip, half out of a desire to not have his name pop up in my inbox constantly. Who was I kidding, anyway? This was Atlantis, and I'd been headhunted for it. Most people never got these sorts of breaks in their career, even less when they were so newly out of university. I might never get this sort of opportunity again.

On the first night I slept through, Sam woke me up with breakfast. I could tell she'd made it for me herself because it tasted terrible. I ate it anyway, feeling like burnt pancakes were all I deserved. She filmed me eating a little – asking for my permission to pass it to her father – and then lay down next to me after I'd put the plate aside.

"I kind of enjoyed cooking that for you," she said. "Maybe I have a shot at being a housewife after all."

Not if those pancakes were anything to go by, I thought, smiling. Of course, with the amount of money in her trust she'd be a completely different type of housewife.

"Well, I'd certainly marry you," I said, realising how that sounded only as I was saying it. "I mean, if I were some guy looking for a meal ticket that includes overcooked pancakes."

I couldn't read her expression but it quickly disappeared and was replaced with a grin, anyway. "Of course you would," she said, giggling. "I'm totally a catch."

Sam excused herself shortly after that and disappeared into the storage room where I could hear her moving things about for what seemed like hours. In her absence, I logged on to Cambridge's online library and searched for titles on Atlantis that I'd not read before. I found one or two, but both of them had since been discredited so I was in two minds about whether or not I should bother reading them. In the end I did, but mainly because it would stop me actually reviewing the artefacts I'd found on Yamatai and writing notes on them like I should be.

I was busy reading when Sam returned and she gave me a fright. I hurriedly tapped at the "x" on Adobe Reader as she approached me, in a way that even she noticed.

"Are you hiding something from me?" she asked with a big smile on her face. "Is it some totally juicy secret?" She wrestled the iPad from me and tried to figure out what I'd been doing. Even though she was behaving like it was a bit of a game, I was terrified she would find something.

I must have looked stricken because she narrowed her eyes at me, still sporting that grin. "Now you've got me curious!"

"It's nothing," I said, attempting to sound calm. I should tell her now, I thought. Do it, Lara!

Her next question completely shattered my resolve. "Are you, like, chatting up guys on the internet or something?" She was joking, I think, but part of her wasn't.

I gave her a look. "You know I'm not."

She gave the iPad back to me. "I'm not sure how much longer I can stay inside," she said. "I've already sorted all my old stuff out, I even actually washed dishes." Sam and cleaning were not well acquainted, so that was more of a statement than it sounded. She looked me up and down critically. "Are you still really sore?"

I shrugged. "I'm a lot better than I was."

"Like, enough to leave the house?"

Probably enough to go on a dig, I thought, and then felt awful again. I nodded.

Her face lit up. "We should go out tonight."

I scoffed. "Sure, on a date with a hundred journalists."

"Nah," she told me. "They're all mostly gone now. Besides, Dad says he's stopped being followed when he leaves. So," she said, "the windows on his Merc are so tinted there's no way anyone will know it's not him leaving the house." And there she goes again, I thought, listening to her run with the idea. "There are heaps of clubs downtown where it's so dark you no one will recognize us. I'm just some Japanese girl and there's so many foreigners in Tokyo now you'll just be some westerner. This is so awesome, we haven't hit the town in ages!"

Well, there was no backing out of this now. Before I'd so much as said a word Sam was running back and forth from her cupboard with various outfits she wanted to try. She'd look amazing in any of them, so there was no real point in trying to help her choose.

She didn't shut up about it all day, and it was only in the late afternoon that she actually double-checked to make sure I actually wanted to go. I didn't, but what could I say? I was already lying to her, I couldn't lie to her and ruin her fun.

After the sun set, she put on the outfit that she had painstakingly selected, and presented herself to me for appraisal. I looked her up and down, thinking her dress looked much the same as three or four others she'd tried on, but complimented her anyway. It was just a silver dress. The only remarkable thing about it was how short it was.

"Well, it's not like I have anything else to show off," she told me. "I might as well get my legs out." She looked mischievous. "You, on the other hand… I totally have the dress for you."

I must have told her a million times how much I hated dresses, but I let her lead me to her cupboard and drape a black dress over my front. Fortunately, it was at least marginally longer than the one she was wearing. The neckline, however, was so low that the bottom of the V would meet below my breasts.

"No," I said, and gave it back to her.

"Oh, come on!" She thrust it back at me. "I bought it like five years ago when I figured I still had a shot a growing some decent cleavage. I've never worn it. It'll go to waste otherwise."

I glanced at her wardrobe and would have put money on the fact that at least half of the clothes in there had never been worn, and all of them covered more of my chest than this dress would. "Can't I rescue some other poor dress?" I asked. "One that won't get me arrested?"

"Girls pay big bucks for bodies like yours," she said, as if I should do it for charity. "Give the rest of us a chance to live vicariously through you."

As I'd said before about Sam: resistance is futile. I think perhaps ten minutes later I was in the dress, standing in front of her mirror.

My cleavage didn't turn out to be the problem. "God," I said, looking at my legs. "I look like an autopsy."

There were so many bruises on them in various stages of healing I could have been straight out of a paintball tournament where the only colours used were purple, brown and yellow. At least the half-sleeves covered my shoulder, though; I was yet to have the stitches removed and I still had to wear gauze tape over them.

"It'll be really dark," Sam promised. "Besides, no one will be looking at your legs."

Sam's feet were slightly smaller than mine, so fortunately that meant I couldn't wear any of her boots or heels. The only shoes that fit me with any degree of comfort were a pair of Roman sandals.

"Whoa, what's that?" Sam asked while I was wrapping the straps around my calves. She was looking at deep bruise my ankle.

"Bear trap," I told her with a slight smile.

"I think you're immortal," she said, after fixing me with a long stare. "It's the only option. Is there anything else I should know? Did you get set on fire or stampeded by elephants or anything?" I could probably have given her a list of things I'd somehow managed to live through, but I don't think she'd really have wanted to know all the details. It would just make her feel guilty. "Wait." She rushed into the other room and returned with the camera. "Let's have this conversation again."

I rolled my eyes, but did so anyway for her.

I didn't really question why we were tucked away in the storage room until Mr. Nishimura returned and Sam motioned for me to be quiet. "The first thing he'll do is go have a bath," she said, peeking around the partition as he called out that he was home. "That's when we can take the car."

I gaped at her: we were hiding in here. "You didn't ask him?"

She snorted, putting on a pair of silver earrings that were so long they brushed her collarbones. "Of course not, you being sick is the only reason he didn't put you on TV days ago."

I put my hand to my forehead. "Oh, God…"

She patted me. "It's okay, I'll tell him it was my idea and he'll just kill me."

"Yes, Sam, that's very reassuring."

She ignored me, holding up a couple of different necklaces at my chest. She pursed her lips. "This one, I think," she said, reaching around me to fasten it. It was a silver lariat that fell between my breasts, and it reminded me of the necklace that Jacqueline Natla had been wearing. My stomach knotted.

Outside, the sound of cheery whistling disappeared into the bathroom across the balcony.

"Let's go!" Sam hissed, grabbing her handbag. "You can put your phone in my bag."

She led me on a jog through the house and out the front door. Yoko could see us from the kitchen, and I saw her raise an eyebrow at Sam. Sam just bid her farewell and dragged me down to the driveway. The driver had already taken his own car home for the night, and the keys to the Mercedes were still in its ignition.

"What?" Sam said when I commented on it. "It's not like anyone can get the car out without Yoko noticing."

We slid into the leather seats, and she lifted the remote to trigger the gates.

"How long has it been since you drove?" I asked her as she tried to figure out how to adjust her seat. We'd always caught the Tube in London.

"On the right-hand side of the road?" She laughed. "Don't worry, there's nothing safer to crash in than this car if I mess up."

"How comforting," I murmured, wondering if the universe had such a sense of humour as to have me survive Yamatai only to be killed in a car-crash with my crazy best friend a couple of weeks later.

She actually did manage to get us to the centre in one piece, but did the worst possible job of parking I've ever seen in my life. I was almost embarrassed to be seen getting out of the car.

We stood on the curb and looked at it; it was angled at least a good thirty degrees out onto the road. "Whatever," Sam said eventually. "I'm sure it'll be fine."

I looked around us as she took my hand, and I couldn't see anyone following us. Perhaps Sam was right about the whole thing just blowing over. I should have felt relieved about that, but instead it just made me worry about the fact I hadn't yet told Sam about the deal with Natla Technologies. It was going to be obvious to her why I'd agreed to the contract when she found out how strong the confidentiality agreement was. No cameras… there was no way in which she wouldn't murder me.

We arrived at an innocuous doorway over a shopping strip. The shops were still open, and there were various people walking about. Fortunately, Sam had been right: it was dark and as far as I could tell, we weren't recognised. The club was probably as soundproofed as technology could make it, but the sound of base was still audible above all the conversations shoppers were having around us.

The bouncer posed another problem for us. "IDs," he told us, holding out his hand. All up his arm were brightly coloured tattoos. I wanted to admire them, but I was too busy worrying about the fact I actually didn't have any replacement ID yet.

Sam clearly hadn't thought about how we would handle this. "Um…" she gave him hers, hoping that would be enough. It was, because he clearly knew her name. He looked at me. "Lara Croft," he said, pronouncing my name the Japanese way. It always sounded strange.

I nodded.

He smirked as he looked between us. "Okay." He unfastened the rope and let us through.

"I hope he doesn't tell anyone," I said, glancing back at him as we walked up the stairs. When I looked forwards again, I had the wind knocked out of me. I had expected some tiny little bar-style club, but area was huge and it was swarming with people. I stopped in my tracks, feeling my heart pound again. Anything could happen in here, I thought. Someone could stab me or Sam and then disappear into the crowd and never be found.

Sam saw my expression. "Sweetie, are you okay?"

I swallowed, trying to snap myself out of it. Of all I'd been through, a club wasn't going to defeat me. I shook my head at her. "I'm fine," I said.

She looked like she didn't believe me, but after we'd taken our phones and checked in her handbag she led me through the crowd anyway. We arrived at the bar. "Are you going to have something to drink?" she asked me, standing in one of the lines.

"I'm not supposed to have alcohol with the antibiotics."

Sam looked a bit disappointed. "Oh, well," she said. "I'll just have to drink your booze for you." She reached the counter and ordered a cocktail, which, for all the money she paid for it, she downed in about twenty seconds flat. I knew my way around cocktails from my second job at uni, and I guessed that she'd just managed to throw back a good four or five standard drinks in about the same number of gulps.

"Save some for the other people here," I told her. She just grinned and dragged me over to the stalls.

"Mind if we sit here?" she asked a group of three men – westerners, I noticed – as she was already sitting down beside them. I actually waited to be told it was alright by a man whose eyes were resting squarely on my cleavage. I felt uncomfortable.

Sam launched straight into an overly friendly conversation with the two men she'd sat beside, and I watched her, a little envious of how easy it all seemed to be for her.

"Your friend's quite the extrovert," the man who was sitting beside me commented. He had an accent.

"Are you Australian?"

He pretended to look hurt. "No! I'm from New Zealand. England?"

I nodded. "Berkshire."

He held out his hand and I shook it, keenly aware he was staring at my breasts. "I'm Scott," he told me. "You are…?"

Shit. "Does it matter?"

He looked surprised, and I think he thought I was alluding to offering something I very much wasn't. "No, I guess not." He made to stand. "Can I buy you a drink?"

"Not unless it's water." He gave me the thumbs-up and went off to the bar.

Across the table from me, Sam had already tucked her phone into her bra and was telling some story about something or rather we'd done in Amsterdam. I couldn't hear everything she was saying over the music, but the men kept glancing at me and smirking. I guessed she was on about the time I'd fallen into a fountain on a bicycle I'd borrowed from a boy we'd just met— we'd been too drunk to drive and hadn't managed to get a taxi. It was one of her favourite stories and she pulled it out at every possible opportunity.

By the time Scott returned, the alcohol was already starting to have an effect on her.

Scott made a show of opening the water in front of me, probably to prove it wasn't full of Rohypnol. I took a couple of mouthfuls and politely answered his questions, but I was more interested in the fact that Sam was pulling the two other men out of their chairs and toward the dance floor. They looked like they couldn't believe their luck. If only they knew what a tease Sam was, I thought.

Sam was a rather good dancer— in the club setting, at least. She knew exactly which moves worked for her body and which didn't, and her confidence carried her the rest of the way. By comparison, I was pretty hopeless. The most I could manage was to move in time to the music, and that's if I was quite, quite drunk.

It was only when she climbed up onto one of the podiums that I began to actually worry about her –she was a little unsteady and those heels were high.

"She's wild," Scott told me, laughing. "What did she drink? I want one!"

I laughed with him politely, wincing as I caught a flash of bright red knickers under her horribly short dress. Well, at least she was wearing some, I reasoned. "I'd better go get her." I apologised to Scott, both for ruining his show and leaving him after he'd bought me a drink. I couldn't really leave my phone on the table with a stranger, either, so I took it with me.

"Lara!" Sam greeted me as I came up beneath her.

I raised my eyebrows and looked away as I got another eyeful of knickers. "You're not leaving much to the imagination up there, Sam," I called up at her.

"I know." She laughed. "Isn't this music great?"

"Come back down, We'll get you another drink." I actually had no intentions of buying her anything other than a Virgin Mary at that point.

She stumbled and I panicked, whipping around the podium as if I could actually catch her if she did fall off. In the end she didn't, but it was what convinced her to climb down. She looped an arm around my neck, giggling as if the whole thing was hilarious. "I feel great," she said. "It's great to just finally be able to relax. Come on." She led me over to an empty spot on the dance floor by the railing. "Let's dance."

I looked about us.

She laughed. "Oh, Lara, you're so shy when you're sober." She put a hand on my waist. "It's totally adorable." Her hand was on top of my wound, but it actually didn't hurt.

She started dancing against me; it was the kind of dance that people would stuff notes into your knickers for. Hers were so much on show I wasn't a hundred per cent certain no one would try, either.

We had a few onlookers, and I felt extremely awkward just standing there. "Sam," I pulled her up from where she'd been half-bent over. "Come and sit down." She was making a total fool of herself.

To make matters worse, one of the men she'd been casually chatting up came dancing over to us with jelly shots. I refused mine and had a go at pulling Sam's from her, but she'd thrown it down the hatch before I managed to. When she was done she offered me the glass to dispose of with a twinkle in her eye. "Oh, you don't want it now?"

I sighed at her, took it, and left it on a nearby table for a busboy to get. When I returned, she threw her arms around my shoulders. From the way the two men were cheering, I guessed that having her arms up pulled the dress too short again.

"Don't do this, Sam," I said beside her ear as she relaxed against me, laughing soundlessly. She was out of control; I actually didn't know if I'd seen her like this before. It was quite scary.

She put her lips to my ear. "Don't do what, Lara?" She used my name deliberately.

I looked over her shoulder at the men leering at her—one of them was filming us on his mobile. I was about to spell it out when she kissed my neck.

It was a shock for all sorts of reasons, the main one being that she got me in exactly the place I liked it and it felt good. It also completely disarmed me.

I was dimly aware of the cheering as her lips travelled down to my collarbone. Finally managing to compose myself, I grabbed her and dragged her off the dance floor and away from the flashing of mobile phone cameras.

I was leading her toward the back corridor with the intention of splashing some water on her face to try and sober her up, when she stopped abruptly against the railing. Then, in one smooth motion that belied how much alcohol she'd drunk, she pulled me against her.

"I'm not really that drunk," she told me, but I could smell it on her breath. She was still dancing slightly; her hips were moving to the music, and moving mine in the process.

She gave me a coy little smile. "You saved me again," she murmured.

"We need to go home," I told her, trying to be serious, as serious I could be when I had my body pressed completely against my best friend's. "Preferably before I need to carry you again."

"Wanna take me home?" she giggled, her lips dangerously close to mine. I wanted to blame it on the alcohol, but I knew I couldn't. She slid one of her hands down to my backside and pulled me harder against her. I had to take a step between her legs to steady us so we didn't topple over the railing.

If a man had done this to me, I'd have kneed him in the groin and then punched him in the jaw. I may also have possibly kicked him in the middle while he was writhing in pain on the ground. But Sam… She was every bit as vulnerable as she'd been in the moments after I'd rescued her from the ritual. The worst part of it all was that I wanted her anyway.

She looked up at me, completely unguarded.

Our bare thighs were interlocked. The unfamiliar smoothness of two sets of shaved legs felt illicit. I could feel the scratchy lace of her knickers against my skin. They were warm, and, God, my cheeks were probably about the colour of them.

I was paralysed again, thinking of all the reasons I should have stopped everything right that instant. She was my best friend, she was horribly drunk, we were in public, I hadn't figured out how I felt about being part of it… the list was endless.

In the end, I just stood against her as she leaned against the railing, my phone practically slipping out of my hands because of how much they were sweating. What on earth were we doing?

When her hands travelled up my waist, she didn't actually ask me if it was okay in so many words, but her face did. I couldn't move; I didn't know how to react. I was terrified she'd stop if I said anything, but I was also terrified she would continue.

When I didn't stop her, her hands cupped my breasts and it made me draw a sharp breath.

There's something shockingly intimate about watching someone's face as they touch you – much more intimate than snogging them the whole time. I could see every movement of every muscle under her skin. She wasn't hiding any of it from me.

It was such a turn on. The fact it could not possibly have been a worse mistake actually made it more of a turn on.

I leaned against her thigh, our breath mingling as I tried to catch mine. I ran my free hand up her ribcage to her own breasts, feeling them under my hands. She watched me, heavy lidded eyes darting between mine and my lips.

She leaned in toward me and that microsecond before our lips touched lasted for eternity.

Something buzzed in her bra.

I jerked backward, startled and dazed.

She looked confused, and then closed her eyes and groaned. "My phone." She reached into her bra to pull it out to silence it, in the process catching sight of the screen.

She frowned momentarily, unlocking it. I couldn't believe she was actually reading a text message at a time like this. I hoped she'd be very quick.

Her lips parted and she straightened. "Lara," she said, in a really strange and really serious tone of voice. "What contract did you sign?" When she looked back up at me it was clear she already knew the answer.

I could see her heart absolutely breaking.


	9. Chapter 9

"Tell me you didn't." She was whispering, pleading with me.

It was killing me. "It's not whatever you think it is, Sam."

"Really?" Her throat sounded tight. "Because it sure feels like it is."

My heart was still pounding. "This is a great opportunity. I spoke with the woman who's running the project, and, Sam," I took a breath, "they've already found it."

Part of me had thought telling that to Sam might help her understand what a huge break this was for me. But, instead, her eyes welled with tears. "And when were you going to tell me all this?"

"I couldn't—"

"You just, what, decided you would keep it from me?" I opened my mouth and closed it again as she continued, getting progressively more upset. There was a measure of anger creeping into her voice when spoke again. "That it's not important to tell your best friend that you've quit your job, got another and are leaving the country, like, now?"

I didn't understand what she meant by the last part, because the commencement date hadn't been for three weeks on the contract Larson had sent me. I'd never set a date to leave Japan. While I was trying to piece together what she was telling me I must have looked distracted, because she shook me roughly. "Are you even listening to me?"

"Of course," I told her quietly.

"When were you going to tell Dad you're going to leave?"

I'd also been hoping I'd just get away with the single interview. All that scrutiny of my personal life made me feel like I'd already done my duty to the network. It sounded so stupid when I thought it clearly through to myself – Yamatai was over, but the media coverage of it had just begun. No one there really understood or cared about what really happened, they just all had jobs to do. Of course her father would want to get me out in the public eye as much as possible while the story was still relatively fresh. The only reason he hadn't was because Sam had managed to convince him I was still recuperating.

Now, here I was in a club and I'd signed onto another project well before the story was milked dry. Sam had done nothing but take good care of me, and what had I done to thank her?

I wanted to apologise to her, but I everything I wanted to say sounded so pathetic.

"Yeah," she said at my silence. "I suppose it would be much easier to just shoot my dad, right?"

My lips parted; that hit me like a punch in the chest. "Sam," I said, feeling my own throat close over. "That's not fair."

"Well, neither is this." She sounded so angry when she spoke again. "Where is it?"

I stared mutely at her.

"The contract, I want to read it."

I unlocked my phone and opened my mailbox. She took the phone from me before I was finished.

It took such an agonising length of time for her to scroll all the way through it. Meanwhile I stood in front of her, wishing I'd never made that phone call. I couldn't even wish that properly, though, because part of me was still very excited about the project. It was in such stark contrast to how I felt about tying up all the loose ends with regards to Yamatai. I would have signed just about anything to never open the safe with the artefacts and never answer any questions about it even again.

She laughed once, humourlessly when she got to a specific point, reading aloud. "…all contractors must agree to keep all details of the project strictly confidential. A separate document will be attached with a full list of banned equipment, which includes such items as cell phones, cameras, recording equipment..."

She was quiet for a moment.

"Well, I just broke the confidentiality agreement," I murmured. It hardly mattered.

"No cameras," she repeated. Then, she took me by my forearms and moved me away from her, so we were standing at arms' length. "I know why you did this."

I was glad she knew.

She spent a few seconds watching me, her lip quivering. Then, she put her head in her hands and cried in earnest.

I tried to put my arms around her, but she shrugged them off. I persisted and eventually she let me, sobbing into my neck. Despite the fact she was right there, I felt cut off from her.

"You would never do something like this," she whispered in my ear. I could barely hear her over the music. "You've never hidden anything from me. What happened to my best friend?"

My throat was constricting and I swallowed against it, trying to draw a breath. She was right, but she didn't want me to answer those questions. I didn't even want to ask them of myself.

I thought of all the things on Yamatai; holding someone by the shoulders and emptying a clip in them from stomach to chin, warm arterial blood spraying all over my hands. How someone can be standing over you one minute and then lying in a puddle of their own blood and entrails the next. I remembered how the thick smoke from burning bodies clung to my nostrils and throat and how it felt to scream through it. But most poignantly, the most branded memory I had was crouching beside crates listening to people I cared about being brutally killed and genuinely believe that I was about to die.

There was no air inside this club. I was breathing, but I didn't seem to be getting any oxygen. I stepped away from Sam, putting a hand to my throat. My pulse was so fast in my neck I couldn't keep track of it.

I needed to get out.

I made a beeline for the doorway, crashing through various groups of club goers and leaving a trail of yelling people and broken glasses behind me.

I was dimly aware Sam was calling out to me, but all I could really hear was my thundering pulse and each ragged breath.

It was much cooler outside. I stopped when I reached the road away from the shopping strip, spotting Sam's father's car jutting out into traffic just ahead of me. At this time of night, there was hardly anyone out walking. I could clearly see each individual person on the street, and for some reason that was comforting.

Sam came jogging up barefoot shortly afterwards, carrying her heels in her hands. Nothing about her suggested she was anything but sober, which must have been quite an effort. I hadn't been able to see in the club that her eye-makeup was all over her cheeks and chin.

She stood a small distance from me, breathing heavily. We regarded each other.

"I don't know what to do," she said, finally. "I'm really angry with you, but the only person who I want to comfort me is you."

"I don't know what to do, either," I said. "I just don't know anything about myself anymore."

It was a relief to see her looking exhausted rather than devastated. "I just want to go home."

The car ride homewas silent – Sam didn't even fiddle with the radio as she did on the odd occasions I had driven in the past. We didn't say anything to each other when we arrived back at the house, either. All the lights were out and everyone was asleep, anyway.

That night was the first night I really had the nightmares.

I was standing in a house on the mountains, and it collapsed and began to plummet into a ravine. The floor cracked underneath me and I was falling, debris all spinning and tumbling around me. For some reason I knew I was wearing a parachute. I was pulling at the cord, desperately trying to force it to release but my arms were weak and the more I tried the more my fingers could barely even grip the tag. Roth was hanging on the mountainside in abseiling gear, talking to someone on the radio. He had a big smile on his face. I cried out to him to catch me, but he didn't hear. I screamed and screamed and screamed but he just continued on chatting into the radio as I fell to my death.

I jolted awake, heart pounding and another scream ready on my lips. I shut my mouth on it.

It was completely silent.

Beside me, Sam had rolled onto her back and looked like she was sleeping off her alcohol peacefully. At least I hadn't woken her up, I thought, although I sort of wished I had.

My wound ached. I rolled onto my side to see if that was more comfortable, but it wasn't. I couldn't find any position that gave me any relief and in the end I just sat up, feeling like I might cry again.

Roth had just been so real and so there. God, how much I wished I could talk to him now. Everything was just such a mess.

When I lay back down again, Sam had turned slightly toward me. She'd always called herself a 'nocturnal snuggler' and claimed she wasn't responsible for anything she did while she was asleep. Well, I wished she'd been responsible for the hand that came seeking mine.

I held it, lying back against the pillow and wiping away a couple of errant tears. Whatever had nearly happened in the club just joined the list of everything that I completely couldn't make sense of and didn't want to think about. I just wanted to keep moving, keep doing something. Maybe I should just dive head first into the cameras and get all of that rubbish over with so I could get on with my life. If I just did it, it would be done and I could leave for Croatia.

There was suddenly a dull light in the room. I looked over toward it and saw Sam's phone had received a message. I carefully freed my hand and reached over her to read it.

"change of plans," it read, from Larson's number. "tell ur cute little friend to pack some warm clothes. we will send a car at 8am."


	10. Chapter 10

The time on Sam's phone was 03:21AM – four and a half hours. Unbelievable.

I unlocked the phone and texted back, "Who sends messages to people in the middle of the night expecting them to be read?"

It was literally ten seconds before the reply came through. "Figured youd be up all night thinking about how excited u r to meet me again haha." I scoffed. It did remind me, however, that I actually hadn't read the message that had tipped Sam off earlier, so I scrolled up looking for it. There it was, short, succinct and terribly incriminating: "Boss wants to fly u out tmrw will add extra $$$ to ur contract to cover contract break with nishamira will txt u later with more details".

"'Nishamira'," I whispered to myself. Well, it made sense that if he was basically illiterate in one language he was unlikely to be able to speak a second.

I was busy writing a rather sharp reply to his flirting when another message came through. "just kidding had stomach wounds myself know what there like," then, "dont tell the father we will keep him quiet".

Thinking back to those prison tattoos on Larson's knuckles, I had a horrible graphic image of something happening to Mr. Nishimura which was fuelled by some of my memories from Yamatai.

Panicking, I selected Larson's number and tried to call it, not even caring that by speaking I'd probably wake the house up. I didn't get the opportunity, however, as the line was engaged.

"Damnit!"I hissed under my breath, and tried it again. It was still busy.

On the other side of the house, I heard a man say, "What?"

I sat bolt upright in my bedroll, looking towards the sound, torn between running across the house to defend him and tried to find some way to hide Sam.

"You're joking. Tell me you're joking." He sounded really angry, and he was speaking in English. "We would never agree to an amount that low. I don't know who signed the authorities. This is unacceptable. I'm coming in, get me a flight to New York before lunch."

I exhaled, listening to him striding across the floor and opening and closing cupboards. Presumably he was getting dressed to leave. I winced. What on earth had I been worried about? This was Tokyo, not Yamatai. I could not have picked a country where people were less likely to be dismembered as they slept.

Beside me, Sam stirred, rolling onto her back and rubbing her eyes. For a second she smiled warmly at me and then the smile quickly faded as she remembered.

It hurt.

"What's going on?" she whispered to me, looking over her pillow towards the sound of her father stomping around the house. "Is that about us?"

I pressed my lips together, trying to determine how best I should answer. "Indirectly," I said cryptically, and handed her the mobile.

She squinted at it.

"Straight after he sent that message, your father got the phone call he's shouting about."

Sam shot me an expression of real concern. "That's really creepy, like really." She put the phone down beside her. "It's like they're doing something illegal, with all this confidentiality stuff and trying to smuggle you out of Japan."

"Smuggle us out."

She didn't acknowledge my correction. "What's his boss like? Is she like him?"

I thought about Jacqueline Natla and her complete professionalism and predatory attractiveness. "No, she's just a corporate CEO."

Sam folded her arms behind her head, staring up at the ceiling while she considered what I'd said. "Corps can get pretty secretive about big projects, maybe they're just being like this because they know the media's after you." Mr. Nishimura walked out the front door and jogged down the front stairs, grumbling to himself. The starter engine turned in the car. "You know," she said eventually. "That's probably it. You're staying here and my family owns the biggest media corporation in Asia. They're probably just being careful."

I lay back in bed. "It's odd they suddenly want you to come, too."

"Maybe they found out you told me somehow?"

"Maybe," I said, but I wasn't convinced. The question I really wanted the answer to was much harder to ask. "Are you going to come with me?"

She took a long time to answer me. "I should say no." She turned her head towards me. "But who am I kidding?" I smiled at her, and she accidentally smiled back. I felt her hand touch mine. She pulled it away just as quickly, though, making a pained noise. "God, what the hell is wrong with me? I should really care a lot more about doing something like this." She shot me a sharp glare, but I'm pretty sure it was mostly for show. "You're a bad influence."

I had never in my life been accused of such a thing and it was a strange concept. People's parents had always been delighted to have me play with their children and my last boyfriend's family had practically tried to marry me off to him. I even used to get teased for sitting up the front of the classroom.

"I hope your creepy friend actually does what he says he's going to do and keeps my father busy." She slowly sat up, putting a hand to her forehead and groaning. "I guess I should actually appreciate the feeling of a hangover while I still actually have a head."

I could barely say it. "You don't have to come, Sam."

She groaned again, leaning heavily against the hand that she had cradling her head. "Ugh, what am I doing?" She glanced at me. "Whatever's made you crazy is contagious. I'm not letting you get on a plane alone with that guy." She put her face back in her hands. "And it's totally going to mean my entire family is going to kill me and will probably never let me in any of their studios ever again."

I should have been more concerned about that, really, but I was just so happy we were going together. Everything was so completely over my head that it would be so lovely to just have her there. I took a risk and reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. "Thank you."

She made a noise. "Oh, my God, I hate you so much right now. At least pack my bag so I can take a mouthful of painkillers and go back to sleep. "

I actually did haul myself out of bed and begin doing that for us, but Sam was too concerned about what clothes I would choose and eventually it got the better of her and her hangover.

"No way can I wear that in Croatia," she told me, completely going through everything I'd put in her suitcase piece-by-piece. "It'll be a million degrees at this time of year. Don't pack anything with sleeves."

"But the text message said you should pack warmly."

"Whatever, I want to work on my tan." It was so pleasant to hear her speaking to me like normal again without any of the anger or accusation that I let her get away with it. I did, however, manage to convince her to pack the coat that she used to wear to uni. Compared to all the tiny singlets and shorts she'd otherwise packed it took up half the suitcase.

The only clothes I had were the ones Sam had bought me, and I dropped them into the suitcase in the space of about ten seconds.

"I should have brought you a swimsuit," Sam said from behind me as she dug through her own to find one that might fit me. Probably most of them would have, but there was absolutely zero chance I was wearing anything she offered me. I'd seen more fabric and less string on a teabag. While she was draping a bikini top across the front of her pajamas to try to decide whether or not to take it, I had an uncomfortable memory from the club. I'd touched what was underneath that top.

In the midst of packing up the rest of my belongings, I found the knickers that I'd been wearing the night before and was at a loss as to what to do with them. I didn't want either Yoko or Sam to find them in the state they were in, so I stuffed them into a pocket of my suitcase. I could wash them myself in whatever hotel we ended up in.

It was dawn when we'd finished.

Despite the fact we'd probably kept her awake for most of the night, Yoko had only just risen and there was a pleasant smell coming from the kitchen. My mouth watered; it was a relief to have my appetite back.

I wandered into the kitchen to have a look at what food she'd made for us. It looked like rice and some sort of white-fleshed fish. My stomach rumbled.

"Is it alright if I make some tea quickly?" I asked her.

"Are you in a rush to go somewhere?" she said, I think feigning innocence.

I wasn't sure how to answer that, apart from looking horribly guilty. Sam came up behind me to search through the medicine cabinet. "Nowhere important," she said casually, threw a couple of tablets down her throat and then gave me the remainder of the antibiotics to pack.

I sat cross-legged at the table in the next room, eating the rice and trying not to make eye contact with Yoko as she presented me with the tea I wanted. Sam sat down beside me for a space of about two minutes, purely to drink her morning coffee.

"She knows," I said quietly to Sam. "I'm sure of it."

Sam shrugged. "She always does. Don't worry, she won't say anything."

By ten to eight, we were sitting on the front steps with our suitcases at our feet. The sound of people idly chatting outside the front gate made me uncomfortable – for some reason a small selection of journalists had gathered on the street this morning. They were speaking English.

"We can still be responsible and unpack," I said half-heartedly, but even I didn't think there was any commitment in it.

Sam was trying to do her eyeliner in the forward-facing camera on her iPhone. "You totally have no right to use your sensible voice on me." She imitated my accent. "I'm still pissed with you. Anyway, it's kind of reminds me of when we decided to cut the last two weeks of class and do Europe and I nearly failed Applied Lighting."

Except this time, we weren't in uni and there wouldn't be an opportunity to repeat the class if we did fail it.

I scratched at one of the scabs on my arms, wondering what had possessed me to sign that bloody contract. God knows what was out there in Atlantis. I'd been on plenty of ordinary digs, but what if this one was like Yamatai? Did I really want to do this to myself?

I couldn't believe what I had got us into, and I couldn't really believe Sam had willingly agreed to be part of it. She was missing out on her shot to become a name in international media by interviewing me. She was missing out on all of the things she had always been so passionate about. The most distressing part was how easily she was choosing to let down her father. It didn't bear thinking about why she was doing any of it.

There was some commotion outside the gates and a horn honked several times.

Well, there was no going back on this one.


	11. Chapter 11

Sam triggered the gates, and they drew open they revealed two shiny black sedans with tinted windows and a small crowd of journalists trying to see inside them. The cars were clearly trying to pull into the driveway and the journalists were too busy trying to push their faces and their cameras against the glass for that to be possible.

In response, the doors on the second sedan opened and two enormous men who reminded me of Jonah stepped out. These men were wearing suits and Bluetooth receivers in their ears, though. I doubted Jonah had ever owned a suit. They approached the crowd, barking orders at them. Fortunately, everyone seemed to accept that it would be a bad idea to disobey and allowed themselves to be herded to the other side of the road.

The cars continued up the circular driveway, coming to a stop near the stairs. A driver wearing the same perfectly tailored suit emerged and put our bags in the boot of the first car. He then held the door open for us.

Sam gave the reporters one last look before climbing into the car behind me. "Don't you think it's weird they're back suddenly?" I did, but she was the media guru, not me. She should have been asking herself that question. "Can I have the iPad?"

"It doesn't have much battery left," I told her, but took it from my carry on and handed it to her.

She first checked Japanese news websites. When I saw her expression, I leaned over to see what she was looking at. From what I could understand, the headline appeared to read: "Nishimura more down than up." It was a pun in Japanese. I didn't really understand what the article said because it was full of kanji I didn't recognise.

"Is that something to do with your father?"

"Yeah," Sam said, her eyes tracking up and down the print. "The network made an enormous loss buying another business."

She went to Google and entered, 'Nishimura Corporation loss'.

There were more than a fifty thousand results. She selected the top story, which was from Yahoo! Business News. It had a video, so she tapped play.

"… Japanese Media Giant Nishimura Corporation lost nearly a quarter of their value on the stock exchange last night when a massive takeover bid turned sour. As the company was widely expected to report large profit margins on the back of their restructure, almost every US fund invested in international shares is heavily exposed to what is now expected to be a loss for this financial year."

The driver started the engine and slowly pulled out of the driveway past the reporters. I watched them, trying to determine if there was a news theme from the logos on their cameras and microphones.

We only stopped briefly, and I heard the doors in the car behind us open and close before we drove off.

Sam paused the video and leaned back against the seat. Looking nervously at the driver, she beckoned me over. Any trace of humour she had was gone as she whispered, "You think that woman somehow did this?"

I felt sick, thinking back to Larson's message. I had a bad feeling about this. "She might have."

"This is…" She searched for a description, but couldn't find one. "Are you sure? Why would whatever is going to happen on this dig have anything to do with hurting my family's business?"

I wasn't sure at all, but I had a horrible feeling I was leading everyone straight into another Dragon's Triangle.

She looked stricken and gripped my hand. "Lara, what are we doing?"

I didn't have an answer for her, but I felt like whatever was happening was all my fault.

She took a moment to gather herself before silently tabbing through various news stories. She found one that she showed to me: It had an image of her bawling her eyes out at the club and me standing away from her. I read the headline aloud, "Nishimura Heiress in public breakdown drama: how she lost her fortune and lesbian lover in a single night." I rolled my eyes and then scanned the article. It went on about how apparently I was horribly angry she'd been dancing with those men and I'd confronted her and, of course, we'd broken up. It also very briefly touched on the actual news: that her family's business had taken a hit.

"It's not true, though, about the money," Sam clarified, probably to make me feel better. "My money's in a trust, it has nothing to do with the network."

"They never let the truth get in the way of a good story," I said, looking at the source which was The Daily Mail.

"Well," Sam concluded, locking the iPad, "if she did do it, it's a pretty effective distraction from us leaving for a couple of months." She put the iPad back in my bag. "It would really make me happy if you did do it after this Croatian thing, though. It's not like you're going to have to do it for them and maybe Dad will forgive me if you do."

I couldn't believe that whatever state I was in after this expedition could possibly be any worse than the one I was in now. Hopefully I'd have sorted my head out by then.

As I mulled over the events of this morning, I just kept second-guessing myself. Did Jacqueline Natla have the facility to actually cause such problems for Nishimura Corporation? Sam had said he'd been working on it for six months, maybe it had just gone sour at a very opportune moment for Jacqueline Natla to take credit for causing it?

"I'm sorry about your father's business," I murmured. It was true, regardless of the cause.

Sam looked back anxiously at the car behind us and then sat back against the seat. "That doesn't even matter," she said. "We've got heaps of money. It's just…" She looked at the rear view mirror to make sure the driver wasn't watching us. Leaning in towards me again, she whispered, "If that woman did this, what else can she do, you know? This is really full on."

I sat silently thinking about the woman. Nothing about her had suggested she was anything other than what she appeared to be. I'd even Googled 'Natla Technologies' and found only pages that advertised their wide variety of services. Sam had commented earlier that their method of getting me to agree to the contract was rather heavy-handed, but perhaps they were worried about the media attention. That just had to be it, but why were they so very worried about it that they needed to drag Nishimura Corporation through the mud in order to do it?

If that had even happened, I reminded myself.

Competing with all of my concern about Natla Technologies' involvement in Nishimura's loss was the fact that I really wanted to know all about where they had located Atlantis. My father had always told me stories about it when I was a child, and events of recent had proven to me that I should have listened to him much more. He would have been absolutely fascinated to be in the position I was in: about to embark on the virgin exploration of it.

Should I give up this amazing opportunity on a hunch that something underhand was going on?

At Narita airport the cars didn't stop at any of the terminals. Instead, they pulled well past the general public into an entrance I'd never seen before, not even with Sam. The doors were much smaller, and the signage above them read Charter / Private.

No sooner had the driver stepped out of the car, Sam turned to me. "Lara, I'm really scared," she whispered. "Do you think I'm being paranoid?"

I put an arm around her and hugged her, although I really felt like I could use a hug, myself. "I have no idea."

When the driver held the door open for us, I climbed out. He'd already put our bags on the footpath and the two burly security guards were standing beside them, surveying the area around the cars. When they saw us exit, one of them gestured to us.

"Get them inside quickly!" he grabbed my arm. The other guard took Sam, who shrieked.

Suddenly, I had a moment of complete clarity. I could see everything around me, every face and every object as if in incredible high definition. It was like all the cottonwool I'd felt had been stuffed inside my head for the last two weeks disappeared.

In one neat move I circled my arm and jerked out of his grip, picking up my suitcase and hurling it at the guard who was holding Sam. It had the desired affect: he released her to protect himself against the impact. I caught her shoulders before she hit the ground. "Come on!"

The only clear route was through the sliding doors inside the airport building, so I lead her through it. We nearly collided with someone.

"You that eager to see me, huh?" It was the American, sporting a beaten up rucksack slung over one of his shoulders. He didn't look at all bothered by how distressed we were.

I pushed Sam behind me, aware the security guards had just followed us through the door. "Don't come any closer!" I shouted at everyone. "I swear to God I'll kill you if you touch us!"

Larson looked around us, eyebrows raised. We were the only ones in the small building. "Hey, now," he said, placing his bag on the ground and holding up his hands as if I'd just told him to drop his weapons. "You two are cute and all, but I'm pretty sure it's against some workplace relations or occupational safety or some crap to harass fellow employees."

I didn't understand.

Larson nodded towards the front window. "See them?"

I wondered if it were a trick to make me take my eyes off him, so I gave him a long hard stare before I finally leaned back against Sam to look where he was indicating. Outside the main terminals, I could see a horde of journalists and reporters moving their equipment towards the Charter building.

"They're the ones who want to harass you, not us." His eyes were twinkling.

I put a hand over my own eyes. I could have absolutely died of embarrassment, right there in the middle of the charter building. What on earth was I thinking? I was a bloody train wreck, so much for Jonah speaking highly of my instincts. Nishimura Corporation were saving themselves from becoming an absolute laughing stock from putting me in front of a camera right now.

Sam leaned her forehead against the back of my neck and her eyes were wet with tears, I think from relief.

Putting an arm around her, I turned around to the security guard I'd thrown my luggage at. "I'm so sorry."

He shrugged as if it were nothing. I supposed he'd probably had worse.

Larson continued to be amused by the whole scene. He held out his hand toward me, pretending to be scared I might bite it. "Larson Conway," he said. I shook his hand, eyeing his prison tattoos and being oddly reminded of Roth's hands. They couldn't be two more different people, but their hands felt the same. He also shook Sam's hand, but she was too haunted to even introduce herself.

I looked back behind us just to really make sure everything was fine. The guards were disabling the door and one of them seemed to be calling the main airport to get assistance to control the media converging on the Charter building.

Larson took our bags as if the lot of them weighed nothing, and where Sam's suitcase was concerned, I knew nothing could be further from the truth.

She didn't let go of me the whole length of the building.

"Natla wants your friend to sign the confidentiality agreement before she gets on the plane with us," he said over his shoulder as we passed through a corridor into a second building. A bored-looking airport security guard stopped us as we entered, asking us the mandatory questions about dangerous goods and x-raying our bags. He also ran our passports through the reader without even really looking at the screen. Given that I usually needed to take my boots off and answer a hundred questions at every checkpoint, it was strange to have them not suspect anything. I wondered if it was because everyone knew who I was, now. Although, if they'd been watching the news, I would have thought that would make them more worried about what was in my bags, not less.

"He might not care, but I need to go through your bags," Larson told us once we were cleared. "I'm sure you understand."

Sam was uncharacteristically silent, clinging to my side. She'd pulled the gauze off the wound on my stomach with how tightly she was gripping me, and the fabric of my t-shirt brushing against the stitches made them itch. As I watched Larson lift my suitcase onto the row of waiting room chairs and unzip it, I wondered if it would be so difficult just to cut my stitches and carefully pull them out myself.

He didn't have much to say about my suitcase. Sam's was another matter. "If this is your idea of 'warmest clothes' we should go to Hawaii together," he said to her, grinning. "You won't get that far in the snow with these." He held up a pair of hotpants.

Sam just looked confused and looked at me to reply, so I did. "I thought we were going to Croatia?"

He snorted. "Not yet, we're not," he said as he closed the suitcase, obviously satisfied we hadn't brought any recording equipment. "You'll need to give me all those techno gizmo things you kids always use now." He held out his hand.

I fished them out of our bags and passed them to him, feeling uneasy. We had no way of communicating with the outside world without them. He saw my expression. "Hey, when you see what's on the sites we're exploring, you won't care about checking your emails every five minutes."

He tucked all of them in his old rucksack. I watched him, noting where in the bag he'd put them. "It's not like we're stealing them from you," he said. "You can use them, you just got to ask and I got to watch what you're doing."

It was looking more and more like Sam had been right thinking that Natla Technologies being very jumpy about media attention, but I couldn't completely trust any of it. Nishimura Corporation did still just lose a quarter of its stock price with very suspicious timing, I was just very heavily persuaded to sign a contract and, God, I still had absolutely no idea where we were going.

"If we're not going to Croatia, where are we going?"

Larson rigged himself in our bags and approached the door leading to the private runway. He looked back at us, waiting for us to follow. Past him, a staircase was being attached to a small corporate jet.

"Peru," he said. "You much of a skier?"


	12. Chapter 12

It took a great deal of willpower to step onto the staircase leading to the jet.

Airports were generally extremely secure, so I didn't like my chances of trying to run away without being eventually caught and interrogated for suspected terrorism. Additionally, I'd have thrown myself in front of a plane before telling Larson I was backing out of the deal because I had a gut feeling something was up.

Sam had a handful of the back of my t-shirt and was clutching her signed confidentiality agreement in her other hand. Larson had taken our bags up the staircase ahead of us.

"Here goes nothing," I said quietly to her, and lead us up into the plane.

I'd flown in a number of charter flights with my parents we they were doing exploration, but most of the flights we'd taken had been with public access carriers or even sometimes with local farmers. I was used to feeling like I was flying in a tin shed several hundred metres off the ground. This jet was entirely different. The carpet on the floor of the jet was a plush dark blue and the interior walls looked like they were made of walnut wood.

We followed Larson as he squeezed his huge frame and all our bags through the narrow corridor on the way to the centre of the plane, past a couple of tiny rooms. The central cabin had eight leather seats and a walnut table separating two sets of four of them. Clearly this jet had been designed with business in mind.

I only realised the outside of the jet was completely free of corporate branding when I saw the Natla Technologies logo was on basically everything on the inside of the plane.

Larson dropped our luggage at the end of the room and went searching through his own bag for something.

The door on the other side of the room opened and a stunningly attractive blonde woman stepped through it. She tilted her head to smile at us, the points of her perfect blond bob brushing her chin.

What hadn't been conveyed from FaceTime was how incredibly tall Jacqueline Natla was – it was like I was face-to-face with a Viking in a dress suit.

"Whoa," Sam murmured behind me. I completely agreed.

She walked confidently forward and extended her hand to me. I took it, dazed. "The Lara Croft," she said. "I must say it is an honor to have another Croft working with us. Your father was an archeological savant and I'm told you have a similar skillset."

My father… There was so much I wanted to ask her, but I had the sense that now wasn't the moment.

She then flashed Sam a disarming smile. "Jacqueline Natla," she greeted her. "I'm told it's rather rare for you to be without your camera equipment. I want to take this opportunity to sincerely thank you for putting it aside for us."

Sam blushed as she shook Ms. Natla's hand. In my opinion that was the rare sight, and so endearing that I wanted to hug Sam for it.

Whether or not she was actually dangerous, she was certainly a very gracious host. Accepting Sam's scrunched confidentiality agreement, she gestured to the leather seats. "Please, sit down. My staff will board shortly with various comforts and you're welcome to make use of everything as you wish." She took her own advice, descending very gracefully into a seat opposite us and crossing her long legs. Then, she slipped her heels off. "I hope you don't mind," she said, the corner of her mouth turned in an every-so-slightly cheeky smile as if she was sharing a secret with her friends. "Flights are just unbearable in stilettos and this carpet is so wonderfully soft."

Her charisma was positively enchanting and Larson had to actually herd us into our own seats to get us to move. My eyes kept being drawn to her legs; on the end of her feet were the double-darned heel and toes of sheer pantyhose. For some reason, seeing them was making me feel as if she were undressing in front of me.

She laid out the confidentiality agreement on the table and leafed through it, checking all the points that were signed. "I won't go through the details of the excavation just yet, suffice to say that we have located the entrance to Atlantis very close to the coordinates you yourself were going to explore. May I ask how you were planning to probe?"

"Ultrasound," I said, telling her something I hadn't even told Sam.

Her eyebrows lifted. "That's a rather novel way of doing it. I suppose with all the work you put into these explorations do become like your own children." She laughed, revealing all of her perfect teeth. Finishing with the papers, she leaned back and flicked her hair behind her shoulders to reveal her long, elegant neck. It looked like a deliberate movement, but it still had an effect on me.

I was attracted to her.

Shocked by the gravity of that discovery, I spent all the time I should have been spending trying to figure out how to ask her about the Nishimura loss fighting with myself about whether or not that feeling had been genuine.

In the end, it was Sam who managed to pull herself together. "My father got a phone call this morning…"

Ms. Natla's professional smile returned as she tucked Sam's agreement into a briefcase on the seat beside her. "Yes, he did. I was wondering when one of you would mention that."

Both of us were listening intently.

"It was just serendipitous timing for us, I suppose." She shared a glance with Larson who had sat against the other window and was opening a packet of crisps. "We just made sure he found out in time to get you two on this flight."

Sam relaxed.

I still felt uneasy about the whole situation, but at least I could comfortably dismiss my guilt about playing a part in ruining Sam's family's business. Being free of some of that guilt allowed me to remember all the things I had imagined about Atlantis when my father had told me stories: all that glory and that beauty, all buried in one city. I was aching to see it, but it seemed we had other business, first. "Why Peru?"

She acknowledged my question. "My research department has determined that there are a number of relics that were taken from the original city soon after it sank. My own personal opinion is that they are absolutely key to understanding the site. I'd like to have them on hand when you enter."

I digested what she was saying, thinking that it was quite odd for the CEO of a sponsorship company to be so personally involved in a project. I supposed she must have a passion for this topic just as I did, and was excited by that prospect. I wondered how closely we would be working together and had to internally chastise myself for letting my mind wonder as my eyes rested on about the third button of her blouse. It was straining a little and looked like it was liable to suddenly burst off.

"I imagine you've heard of the Scion?"

I looked sharply back up; actually, I had heard of it. My father had called it something different, though. "The Heart of Atlantis?" It featured so strongly in the mythology I could not possibly know about the city without knowing of it. Blavatsky had been the first to suggest that it was a real object rather than just a reference to the ruler or nationalist spirit. Of course, he'd also waxed poetic about some godlike master race of Nordic-Altanteans from the North Pole and archeologists had since given him about as much respect as someone would get searching for the skeleton of Santa Claus.

Clearly this woman thought he might have been onto something, though.

"You've found it?" I asked, amazed.

"Well, part of it. We haven't been able to unearth it, though. It's located inside a deep, complex tomb in Peru." She looked squarely at me. "And that's where we need your special talents."

Some of my amazement faded when I thought about the idea of climbing through more tombs. As if I hadn't had quite enough of those on Yamatai. "I'm not sure what you mean about 'special talents'. I only found Yamatai because I've done four years of hard research on it."

She considered me, leaning back in her leather chair. "Eighty-three men dead, not including –what did BBC call them?—isolated generic variants." She inclined her head toward her lackey. "Not even Larson's got a body count that big."

"How embarrassing," Larson said through his mouthful of crisps. "I've been beaten by a girl."

I had no idea it was that many. It was sobering to think I'd had that many opportunities to die and yet somehow hadn't. I looked over at Sam, wondering if I ever would have done it all if not to rescue her.

She looked completely lost in this conversation and was twisting her rings, looking tired and uncomfortable. She'd often been stuck in a room full of theorising archaeologists but never without her iPhone.

"What am I doing here?" she asked suddenly.

Ms. Natla looked a little surprised that she'd spoken again. "Would you prefer we left you here?"

Sam looked at me. "No…"

"I personally find having my friends around can be very motivating." It was unsettling the way she expressed that, especially as she and Larson shared another glance. "I thought it might help Ms. Croft to have you present, rather than starting her first solo project alone."

Before I could respond to what she'd said, I heard the sound of people chatting good-naturedly to each other up the back of the jet. I guessed they were the staff that Ms. Natla had spoken of before.

Ms. Natla looked very slightly annoyed as they entered, but hardly let any of it leak through into her voice. "That's enough for now, I think," she said, closing her briefcase and standing. She dipped briefly to the floor to retrieve her heels. "Larson?"

He stood, wiping his dirty hands on his jeans. Charming, I thought. He saluted us a little patronizingly and, to my disappointment, took the bag with all our communication equipment with him to the other room.

"We'll be in the last room," she told us, directing me a half-smile that made my stomach flutter. "If you specifically require anything, just ask my staff."

With that, she exited and left the crew to prepare the jet for take-off.


	13. Chapter 13

Having just had breakfast – or in Sam's case, a coffee which was half beans and half sugar – neither Sam nor I were particularly interested in bothering Ms. Natla's staff for anything. The three of them quickly determined that standing around trying to be useful to us was a waste of their time, and retreated into another room. I felt more comfortable with them gone anyway because all of them had that predatory focus of someone who's known how to strip an M16 in less than minutes since they were old enough to pose with it in a photo with daddy.

Sam didn't speak for a few minutes until after they were gone, which was uncharacteristic of her. She was pretending to be very busy fixing the fold of her scarf until finally I prompted her. "I guess we're not in mortal peril after all." I smiled at her.

"I'm hungover," she told me, perhaps slightly sullenly.

Sam was already a hangover world champion at seventeen, so she could never effectively use that excuse for anything. I put a hand on her wrist to stop her from fiddling with the scarf. She made eye contact with me and I gave her one of those looks.

She sighed and leaned back in the leather seat. "I was a total third wheel in that conversation."

I wasn't really sure how to remedy that, since normally just pointing a camera at people was enough inclusion for her when it came to stuff like this. I couldn't really offer any suggestions because all of them included equipment that had been confiscated. "At least now we know she didn't ruin that deal for your father."

Sam nodded, but she didn't look very comforted. "Yeah, I suppose."

I frowned at her for a moment, at a loss as to what to do. Talking about Atlantis just gave me such fond memories of my childhood, but for her it was probably just another discussion that meant basically nothing to her. My father had just brought it all to life for me. I had an idea. "I could tell you the story of Atlantis?" I offered her. "There was one point when I used to make my father tell it to me every night."

That made her smile faintly. "Nah, I kind of know it. It's one of those things normal, non-crazy people know."

I elbowed her, but it was playful. "It's just... do you know how amazing this is? That she's actually found part of the Scion? Hardly anybody even believes that it exists." I shook my head, imagining what it would be like to be the first person in thousands of years to hold it it in my hands. "I can't imagine how much work must have gone into that sort of research. She must have been doing this for years. It just takes so much dedication and focus and..." My sentence trailed off when I saw the way Sam was looking at me. "...what?"

She batted her eyelashes. "'And she's just so amazing, I mean incredible.'" She was trying to do my accent again. "'I want to have like ten thousand of her babies...'"

I mock-glared at her. "It's not like that."

Sam put up her hands. "Just saying: total girlcrush."

That made me very angry for some reason. "It is actually possible to admire someone without sleeping with them, Sam," I said, regretting it even as I was saying it. "I know that's a difficult concept for you to understand." The hurt visible as she looked at me reminded me of the rest of the hurt I'd caused her over the past twelve hours, and I felt horrible again. "God, Sam, I'm sorry..." I put a hand on her shoulder. "That was horrible, I don't mean it."

She shrugged my hand off. "You should be looking for lost relics of your last sexual experience instead of this Atlantis stuff."

I winced. "I deserve that."

Sam glanced at me. "You did." She was sitting against the window, so she pointed over at the cupboards. "I saw the air hostess woman or hired goon or whatever she was put pillows in there. Could you grab me one?"

It was the least I could do, so I hopped up to retrieve one for her and took another for myself. The jet was taxiing out to the runway when I returned and gave one to her. "You going to try to sleep?"

"Beats being insulted by my best friend."

I felt awful again. "Sorry..." I sat down next to her

She shrugged. "I know." When she looked at me, I could see forgiveness. It only made me feel worse. "I guess I can't really blame you. I mean, I'm the reason you..." She looked at my stomach.

"I got that much earlier, remember?" I told her. "And it's much better now, it only hurts occasionally."

She patted her shoulder. "Come on, I'm comfier than a pillow." She was rather boney, actually, but as it was more an olive branch than a genuine comment on her softness, I accepted her invitation and lay my head on her carefully folded scarf.

It was so odd to be lining up with a runway and not have air hostesses explaining to me where the closest exits were and what to do with an oxygen mask dropping in my face.

"I should probably ask that guy if I can text my dad at some point," Sam said as placed the pillow against the window and settled into it. "He'll eventually notice I'm not there and probably worry about where we are." I secretly doubted that; Mr. Nishimura didn't have a great track record in that respect. It was one of the things that had allowed Sam to go on three-day long benders in her last year of high school.

"I think he was going to New York," I told her, trying to find a comfortable way to rest on her sharp shoulder.

"Oh, right." She didn't say anything else until after the plane had taken off. "My head is fucking killing me, here's hoping I can sleep it off. 'Night."

"Good night." I grinned into her shoulder.

The flight to Lima was apparently fourteen hours and ten minutes. I spent a great deal of those hours either passed out on Sam's pointy shoulder, or locating a pair of nail-scissors and picking out the stitches in my stomach and shoulder. It was an odd sensation, pulling the thread through the skin, but it didn't really hurt. Larson had the misfortune to walk through our cabin at the exact moment I was lying on my back on the floor cutting at them, and he gave me a strange look that was full of respect. "You are one tough cookie," he said as he stepped over me on his way to one of the tiny rooms in the back. When I was done there were some tiny holes left from the thread, but I figured since I was still taking the antibiotics I didn't have to worry too much about them. The scars themselves were pink and not particularly tender.

I pulled my t-shirt back over my stomach from where it had been bunched under my bra, pushing myself up. I wasn't one hundred per cent by any means, but I felt quite good for the first time since Yamatai.

Sam was curled up in the seat with her knees against her chest and her socks poking out from underneath the Natla Technologies airline blanket. I stood and watched her for a moment. It gave me such peaceful feeling to see her safe and sound. I smiled to myself, feeling just so wonderfully lucky that she wasn't one of the people I'd lost on Yamatai. She was so close to being Himiko – so close. I reached out and stroked her hair, glad she was still Sam.

She stirred, and I hurriedly lifted my hand rather than wake her.

When the plane touched down in Lima and we were able to alight, Ms. Natla greeted us politely – again with the disarming half-smile – and mentioned something about a hotel. Larson, playing the role of security, host and driver, drove the two of us to The Westin and handed our bags over to a porter. "We'll be back later tonight," he told us. "Ms. Natla will probably schedule the first briefing tomorrow fairly early in one of the rooms in the convention centre. She's one of those morning people."

Although we'd been on a plane for fourteen hours, it was still mid-morning in Peru. The porter lead us to the room that had been booked for us – one of the penthouse suites in the very top of the building. Not even Sam used to book rooms this huge. I wanted to check how much the room had cost Natla Technologies, but a quick search of the penthouse revealed absolutely zero computers or anything that resembled one.

Sam picked up the phone and held it to her ear. "Dead," she said. "That's so creepy."

I shrugged. "I suppose they just told the hotel to remove any communication and recording devices."

She wandered over to the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the central business district and examined the view. "Well, they didn't tell the hotel to keep us here, right? We could just go out and buy phones."

I thought about how much I wanted to be involved with the exploration of Atlantis. "Maybe they have a reason for all this."

She looked back at me. "Seriously? You're not the least bit curious about why this is?"

"I'm curious, but not curious enough to do something I specifically signed about ten sheets of paper saying I wouldn't do." I circled my neck; I was a little stiff from sleeping on the plane. Thinking that perhaps a long bath might solve that problem, I went to investigate the bathroom and found a spa that could comfortably fit at least four people. It had the same breath-taking view as the bedroom.

Sam came up behind me to see what I was up to. "Awesome," she said, clapping her hands on the top of my shoulders before returning to the other room. "Hot tub time!"

I followed her back into the bedroom where she'd opened the suitcase on her bed and was choosing between about five different swimmers. She beckoned me over. "You can't really complain these are too skimpy when it's just you and me. This'll fit you." She gave me a gold triangle bikini. "Looks like I'll get some wear out of these clothes after all!" My initial assessment of the item was that it would probably have been perfectly at home on an oiled woman twirling around a pole, stilettos optional. She was right, though, it was just her and I so it hardly mattered.

I had lifted my t-shirt over my head, tossed it over to my own bed and just slipped my bra off when I heard her say something under her breath. I looked up.

"You pulled out your stitches!" she said. Without really thinking about it, she reached out to test how the scar felt to the touch.

I was acutely aware we were both topless and she had her hand on my stomach. I'd seen her breasts many times before; we'd always shared accommodation whenever we went anywhere. But this time, it hadn't been a full day since I'd had them in my hands. They looked smaller than they felt, and her nipples were soft.

We locked eyes.

I couldn't ignore what my first thought was: to close that space between us with a single step and pull her into my arms. I imagined how it would feel to have my breasts pressed against hers as I kissed her deeply. God, the shade of red my cheeks must have been. I wouldn't have been surprised at all if she could read my mind by just looking at my face.

Sam rescued me by looking away and slipping her halter-neck bikini on, tying it behind her back. Her bottoms followed suit. "I'll run the water," she said, as if nothing had happened. She walked casually into the bathroom, completely unaware of the exclusive view she was giving me of the back of the suit.

I took a deep breath, looking down at the bikini top lying on the bed in front of me. Sam, then my new boss. I could choose to pretend there wasn't a pattern here if I wanted, but I'd have been totally kidding myself.

I had never been at all bothered by gay people or the whole concept of it, really, but it had always been a sort of separateness about them that meant I could safely not even really think about it. It was a completely different matter when suddenly it was me in question. I just felt like the word 'lesbian' was so alien. I felt like I could never use it to describe myself.

God, maybe that was why Daniel and I had never worked out? I hadn't really been that into him, but I always thought it was more of a personality thing than anything else. I had a moment of misgiving as I looked back over my dating history and reexamined all my relationships. I was reasonably attracted to some of them, but I'd always felt like something was missing. What if the thing that was missing was not just a 'click' of being with the right person, but the fact they weren't women?

"You coming, Sweetie?" Sam called from the bathroom.

I snapped myself out my internal monologue and hurriedly pulled on the bikini Sam had offered me, thankful for an excuse to not continue down the line of thought I had been travelling on. When I entered the bathroom, Sam was already sitting on the seat in the tub, her feet swirling in the water as it filled up. I made a calculated attempt to not look at any part of her that might start the whole uncomfortable process again.

For her part, Sam seemed pretty content to act as if nothing had passed between us. When the water level was high enough and we turned the jets on, I was distracted enough by our reminiscing about the last time we were in a spa bath – which was in England with the head of faculty's two oldest sons who were also studying there – to relax and enjoy the feeling.

It would have been a good hour later when I decided to get out: Sam had her arms around the rim of the bath and her head tilted back against the tiles surrounding it. I had a few alarming seconds of imagining myself climbing over her to kiss that neck and pull that bikini off her chest, and then I stood up and announced I was going to dry up.

It was as if even just asking myself the question about my sexuality had opened the floodgates to every lesbian porn movie ever in my mind.

She lifted her head up, looking disappointed. "So soon?" I nodded. "Okay, well, it'd be kind of boring here by myself. Guess I'll get out, too."

It was a relief to put my clothes back on again. I was drying my hair with the rich Westin Hotel towel when Sam came out of the bathroom where she'd been re-doing her eyes. "Did you pack my hair dryer? The one here is about a hundred years old."

I had the towel over my head. "Front pocket of my case."

"Awesome, thanks," she said, and I heard her walk over to my bed.

I had a sudden memory of what else I had stuffed in that pocket that I had specifically not wanted her to see. I whipped the towel off my head just as she was unzipping the case. "Wait, wait!" I said, rushing over and trying to take over from her. "I'll get it for you."

She stepped back, mouth a little agape. Then, she narrowed her eyes at me. "No, it's fine, I'll get it. You just finish your hair." She was testing me.

"It's no bother," I tried to step in front of her but she didn't budge an inch.

"Are you keeping more secrets from me, Lara?"

I stopped unzipping the pocket and stood up to face her. "It's nothing like that."

"What is it like?" she said, looking angry. "Show me what you're hiding in there."

I opened my mouth and closed it again. "Don't make me say it, Sam. It's not whatever you think it is."

She raised her eyebrows, challenging me.

I swallowed. She was giving me absolutely no option. "It's the knickers I was wearing last night."

She made a face. "Why would care if I..." the words died on her lips, and recognition passed over her face. "Oh..."

We squared off. She was quiet for ages, then closed her mouth. "Listen, Lara..." She searched for what she wanted to say. "It's okay if you're–"

Panicking, I threw up my hands. "Don't say it, Sam."

"But–"

"No, Sam, please, just–"

She swung her own arms out, probably in frustration that I wouldn't let her speak. "Lara!" she said, her voice rising and straddling two octaves. "Will you just let me say that I'm–"

"No!" I took a breath, put my arms down. When I spoke again, my voice was quiet. "Please, just give me some privacy on this."

There were tears in her eyes. "Whatever," she said, and went and locked herself in the bathroom.


	14. Chapter 14

The walk to the conference centre from the main hotel was all under cover. Sam and I walked together the following morning, but in silence. Larson was leaning against the door frame waiting for us.

We weren't exactly not talking to each other, but it must have been clear that something was amiss because he looked between us with his pale eyebrows up in his hairline. "Did I miss something?" he asked. "World War Three, maybe?"

What he'd actually missed was Sam raiding the minibar while I pretended to be very interested in what was on BBC International news. It was some actual news for a change; although they did mention the failed Nishimura Corporation takeover and had some market analysis of possible reverberations. There was also some economic discussion about Greece and Cyprus and some other issues I couldn't have cared less about. All it effectively did was give me a reason to not make eye-contact with Sam as she drank everything that wasn't nailed down.

While she was passed out on her bed and snoring a little, I'd managed to find a way to rationalise my feelings. I had all sorts of men try to do all sorts of things to me on Yamatai, obviously subconsciously I was looking to make safe choices. I wasn't completely convinced by that explanation, but it felt a whole lot more comfortable than having to consider what my future might be if that wasn't the case. Not that I'd really thought that much about my future beyond uni, except when it came to all the exciting places I could explore now I wasn't restricted by semesters and exams. I just always kind of assumed I'd get married and have children, even though I wasn't really interested in either.

While I watched Sam sleep, I reflected on how odd it was to have such a dilemma and not to be able to discuss it with her. I was used to even telling her the smallest things about me, it was a huge omission to not be sharing this. I was desperate to know her assessment of what she'd discovered about me, but at the same time I couldn't bear to hear it. If no one said it, it wasn't real. It was just me being fucked up over what had happened to us.

Larson was clearly waiting for an explanation. I shook my head dismissively, having no desire to joke about it. "Jet lag," I lied as I walked past him.

He followed us inside. There were signs with the Natla Technologies logo and arrows pointing us towards rooms, so I didn't need his assistance to find the briefing. Sam actually pushed past me when I stopped at the entrance to the theatre, and I was taken aback by it. It was such an angry gesture. I reached out and took her arm. She looked back at me and shook her head, pulling away, but less abruptly. Well, I didn't want to push her, I thought. She's probably wondering who the hell her best friend is.

I watched her sit down near the rear of the theatre and sink into the backrest of her chair, looking like she'd not slept in a week. All she needed to complete the picture was sunglasses.

"No sleep?" said a sultry voice behind me.

My hair stood on end. I could practically feel Ms. Natla's presence like a weight on me. "Depends if you differentiate between sleep and unconsciousness."

She chuckled; it was a low sound I could practically feel in my spine. I felt delighted I'd caused it. "Well, I'm pleased to hear you're taking advantage of all the hotel has to offer," she said, putting a hand on the small of my back. She was merely ushering me inside the small auditorium and the touch was purely professional, but it lit me up as if I'd been doused in kerosine. "We'll begin shortly."

I let her lead me to a seat near the front, looking over my shoulder to back where Sam was. She wasn't looking at me. I worried about that as I sat down in the chair and unfolded the lecture table. "You won't need that," Ms. Natla told me and I saw she was referring to the table. Standing over me, she watched me for a moment before leaning forward and reaching out towards my lap. My heart was absolutely in my throat as she stowed the lecture table by my side again, giving me a very deliberate view down her ample cleavage. When she straightened, she caught my eyes and held them for a moment before she spun and approached the lectern.

She was flirting with me, I realised. I had no idea whether she meant it to lead anywhere, but there was absolutely no doubting that look she'd just given me. Did that mean she was...? I watched her organise herself up the front of the room. She was so completely calm and confident; I envied her. However, I was also terrified that she might do it again, because I just had no idea how to respond to it.

There were various other people slowly dribbling into the theatre. I watched them enter, picking out the engineers from the researchers and trying to discern who everyone else was. They were all so casual, as if they did this every day. One of the men was talking on his mobile and I could hear him saying, "Don't worry, honey, Daddy will be home before your concert." He handed his phone over to Larson before he sat down as if he'd done it a hundred times. I felt butterflies in my stomach: people actually made a living out of this. I wasn't doomed to be another Whitman; I could do this, this could be my normal!

"I'd thank you to take your seats quickly, we've got a lot to get through," Ms. Natla said into the microphone, and the rest of the people milling around quickly followed her instructions. "I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone, especially the newcomers, that no notes are to be taken during this briefing. If you forget any details you're welcome to consult other signed project members."

I glanced back at Sam again; she looked completely lost amongst the sea of archeological project workers. My heart pulled, but I couldn't call out to her to come down next to me now. I looked back to the front.

Ms. Natla gestured toward me. "Stand up, Lara. Everyone," she addressed the auditorium as I stood, "I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the lead, Ms. Lara Croft." Everyone clapped politely, and I blushed with pleasure at the introduction. This was the sort of attention I wanted. "I'm sure many of you will recognise her from recent events. We're hoping she'll give her Midas Touch to this project, too," she smiled warmly at me. That smile... I couldn't help but return it.

I heard a noise in the back of the room. When I looked over, I could see Sam shimmying across a row of people to excuse herself. I wanted to follow her but that would be out of the question given the warm welcome I'd just been given. I couldn't even text her.

Having no other option, I sat down and listened to the rest of the briefing.

It was quite complicated and I was so excited about the overlap of Inca civilizations and the myth of Atlantis that I desperately wanted to have some space to think over the details. She showed a few slides of the caverns and rock formations underneath the site location – which wasn't mentioned – and using a laser pointer indicated the suspected structures and tombs given the density of the rock and underground water formations. I wasn't so keen on the concept of spelunking, but perhaps it would be worth it for the opportunity to be involved with the dig. A geologist then got up to speak about the challenges of working with structures at such depths and I looked over the audience to see all the engineers with deep frowns on their foreheads.

Towards the end of the session, Ms. Natla returned to the lectern and reminded everyone that there were strict laws governing the removal of artefacts and rules about how to work with ancient structures. Her solution to this was that all movement of any discoveries was to be supervised by me. Everyone seemed to be satisfied by that request, everyone except me, that is. While I was familiar with the laws various East Asian countries, I was completely unsure of the laws in Peru. I also had no way of researching them without a computer or a phone.

When the briefing was over, I had to wait for Ms. Natla to settle some sort of dispute with one of the other archeologists before I could speak with her. He was very angry about some detail and was unleashing a tirade of French at her. She listened politely and then told him he was welcome to leave the project if he was unhappy with her decisions.

As I approached, he turned to me and said in a heavy French accent, "And how old are you, eh? Twelve? Thirteen? This is unbelievable, unbelievable!"

I stared at him, taken aback.

"I'll tell you what she is, Pierre," Ms. Natla said, her voice steady. "She's qualified and experienced."

He looked from me to Ms. Natla and threw up his hands in the air, yelling something in French. He then stormed off.

Stunned, I watched him leave.

"Pay no attention to Pierre," Ms. Natla told me after he'd exited the auditorium. "He's just sore because he's lead the last three projects I've done."

"Oh," I said. His comments made sense, now, but they didn't feel any better.

"Now," she said, turning to give me her full attention. "Was there something you wanted to ask me?" The tone of voice made it difficult for me to string together two thoughts.

"My expertise is East Asian Civilizations," I said, forging through the butterflies. "I don't know anything about how to correctly process or do all of the legal paperwork for anything we find here."

Ms. Natla gathered up her notes from the lectern and tucked them neatly into her briefcase. "No concerns there," she said, fastening the buckles.

I didn't understand.

"We're not going to follow any of the local laws." When I stared agape at her, she waved her hand at me. "No one does in Peru. Whoever pays the Department of Environment the most money can take whatever they want." She indicated the people leaving. "They're mostly all scientists, though, and they have no idea how to preserve and and pack anything they dig up. You do." She pulled her memory stick out of the projector and tucked it inside her breast pocket. I followed her as she walked out of the auditorium. "I hope you and your friend will sleep better tonight," she said. "We'll fly you out on site first thing tomorrow morning."

I couldn't hide my excitement about that detail, and she shot me with that half-smile again. "We'll have pre-drinks tonight in the hotel bar, though," she said, using the lowest register of her voice. "Anyone in the project is welcome to join us, especially the lead archeologist."

I normally didn't really enjoy going out – it wasn't as if I hated it, but it wasn't on my list of favourite pastimes – but wild horses couldn't have dragged me away from whatever it was she had invited me to.

I half-jogged, half-walked out of the auditorium: I couldn't believe I was actually going to be part of this project! Yamatai seemed like a hundred years ago, and all I could think about was that I might very well be the first person to look at the Scion since Qualopec had taken it from Atlantis. I couldn't even imagine what that would feel like. My heart was positively singing.

I wanted to find Sam so I could tell her what she'd missed out on, but I thought I might duck back to the hotel room first to grab a jumper. It was colder than I'd expected in Lima – it was nearly winter in the Southern Hemisphere, after all. I walked briskly through to the bedroom, tucking my access card back in the pockets of my army pants.

Sam was lying face-down on her bed.

I stopped in my tracks. "Sam?"

"Go away."

Well, she couldn't have said anything more likely to make sure I didn't go away. Instead, I sat down on the edge of her bed and tentatively put a hand on her back. I wasn't really sure what I'd done to make her so angry with me. "Ms. Natla's invited us to drinks tonight," I said, thinking that if she wasn't interested in all the dry details she might at least enjoy some socialising. "Perhaps we could–"

She interrupted me by turning abruptly over. "Are you going to hook up with her?"

I think my eyes nearly fell out of my face. "No!"

Sam rolled her own eyes at me and turned over again. "If you don't come up tonight, at least I'm going to know where to find you."

I stared at her back, feeling my stomach drop. I guess that's how she felt about what she'd discovered about me, then. I had a horrible thought where I imagined she might fly back to Japan without me, and I wondered if it was going to ruin our friendship. It just didn't make sense, though, I just couldn't imagine Sam would have such a problem with my sexuality if I turned out to not be straight. I just didn't know how else to interpret her behaviour. "Sam, don't be like this."

After a few seconds, she sighed and slowly turned over. She tucked her hands behind her head, looking at the ceiling instead of me. "She's hot, I get it," she said. "But don't you think all of this is kind of... sudden?"

"All of what?"

Sam shrugged. "I don't know. I just get kind of a bad feeling about the whole thing."

I had absolutely no idea what she meant, but I was reasonably certain it had nothing to do with my sexuality so I felt relieved. Maybe she was just feeling left out because normally she had a crew of several people to be ordering around and a camera in her hands. "It seems pretty well organised," I told her, thinking of the briefing. "All the usual people are there. There's a lot less archeologists and labourers than usual, but otherwise it seems pretty normal."

"Maybe it's just her, then."

I frowned. "She's just your garden variety corporate."

Sam shrugged. "Just calling it like I see it." She looked at me. "Don't get me wrong, Lara, you can sleep with whoever you want. It would be kind of hypocritical of me say anything else." I felt like a tonne had just been lifted from my shoulders. "But she's, I don't know..."

I knew exactly what she meant, but didn't have any way to express it. "Yeah, there's something about her."

"Doesn't it bother you?"

It did bother me, but at the same time I was already excited about socialising with her outside business meetings. I wondered what she'd wear.

Sam touched my hand. I noticed her eyes were red. "Okay," she said, and then took a breath. "You know I'm here for you, right?"

That made me want to cry, myself. I pulled her up to give her a tight hug. Just that simple phrase was perfect; it didn't say anything about what she knew I was struggling with, but it said enough. "I'm sorry," I whispered. "Thank you."

She nodded, and when we pulled away I could see her eyes were wet again. She hurriedly wiped them. "I'm a mess." She laughed miserably.

I hugged her again. "We can be total wrecks together."

She held my arms, her lip quivering. She let a few seconds pass before she spoke. "You're everything to me."

I nodded, thinking I was so stupid of me to have worried about what she'd think about whatever I was going through. Of course she'd be there for me. I touched her face. "You're my only family," I said. I had thought it was a rather lovely thing to say, but it made her collapse into tears. Well, I figured as I hugged her again, we were completely in pieces at the moment. She probably didn't know which way was up, either.

After dinner, I raided Sam's suitcase for evening wear. The only piece I could bring myself to actually put on was a strapless top which unfortunately showed off the entire length of my scar and a series of scratches and bruises on my upper arms. "Do you have a cardigan or something I could put over this?" I asked, burrowing through all her clothes.

She was watching me, hugging her pillow. I had tried to convince her to come with me, but I supposed I couldn't really subject her to more archeological babble if she didn't want to hear it. In the end I'd let her win the argument to stay in the hotel room. "Only my jacket," she said.

I tried on her jacket, but she was a size smaller than me and the shoulders were too narrow. I gave up. "Looks like I'm showing that French man I'm not your average thirteen year old," I said, brushing my hair and tying it up again. Sam gave me a very odd look, but didn't ask for clarification. I looked back at the mirror. "This doesn't look too grotesque, does it?"

She shook her head. "You can't really see the details in this light, and it'll be darker anyway." She looked down at my army pants. "I'm more concerned about you trying to pull off 'hipster'."

I looked down my front. "But there's black in them, and this top is black. They sort of go together." She raised an eyebrow. I made a face at the mirror, fixing my pendant. It looked great with the strapless neck. "That's it, I'm just going to go down there like this. I'm sure no one will notice."

The hotel bar was full of women in cocktail dresses and men in suits. Larson stood out like a sore thumb in his flannel, and he obviously couldn't have given two hoots. "Lara!" he called when he saw me, wandering over and offering me a swig of his beer. What was I, ten? I put up a hand to turn it down. "Your loss, girl," he said, and put it to his lips, drinking the whole lot. "This stuff's gold. Can I buy you something strong?" He winked at me.

"I don't think they make drinks strong enough for that," I told him dryly.

He shrugged. "Pity. I like 'em tough," he said. I had the feeling the only requirement for Larson was that they were breathing. I wasn't even sure that even that was a firm condition for his type, either. I shivered, thinking of Yamatai.

"Can it, Larson," Ms. Natla came up behind him and gave him a hard stare. She probably said something else, or maybe he did, but I was feeling to overwhelmed and self-conscious to have caught it. Ms. Natla was wearing a knee-length satin dress that was scoop neck. It displayed all of the cleavage that she'd so cleverly hinted at in her suits as well as defined collarbones and shoulders. Her calves couldn't have been a nicer shape, either. There were muscles, there. Had I misjudged her? Maybe she did get into exploration and digs as well as her desk work.

"Didn't bring a dress?" she asked knowingly when Larson had retreated back to the bar.

I sighed. "Is it that obvious?"

She looked me up and down. "Well, I rather like the army chic," she said. "It certainly suits your scars."

I nearly died of embarrassment. What had I been thinking? "I'll go change," I told her, stepping away.

She stopped me with a warm hand on my arm. "Stay," she said, catching and holding my eyes. "Strapless tops are so much faster to take off."

It was like I'd had the breath knocked from me. I couldn't believe she'd really just said that; I just gaped at her.

"Come have a drink with me," she ordered, and I couldn't refuse. She'd already reserved a booth in the corner, and there were two cocktails waiting for us: they looked like dry martinis. Even her taste in drinks was classy. I shouldn't have been drinking on the antibiotics, but she'd already handed me the drink and I'd already taken a sip before I had any sort of awareness of what I was doing.

We sat opposite each other on the crescent-moon seat. She leaned back, taking a sip and watching me. "There aren't that many women in this line of business," she said. "It's such a pleasure to be drinking with one of them." The way her lips turned on the word 'pleasure' was so erotic, I could barely manage to draw one breath after another. The satin of her dress didn't hide anything, least of all the lace of the bra she was wearing underneath. I could also see a faint line of her nipples. Her breasts just looked so full, I couldn't help but imagine turning them over in my hands.

"This isn't..." I began, but was unable to finish my sentence.

Her half-smile returned. "Oh, I know," she said. "You're fresh out of college, this is your first solo exploration." She leaned forward, so far forward I could see her belly-button through the gap between breasts. "It's fun, though, isn't it? These projects?" She crinkled her nose on 'fun'. "I bet you're really enjoying yourself."

She was just so intense. I felt like a mouse being hypnotised by a cobra – I couldn't move. I wasn't sure I wanted to move. "I am."

Her eyebrow pulled a little. She reached across the table toward me, tracing fingertips over the scar on my shoulder. "I've been doing these for years," she said, "I know exactly what to do, so if you have any questions, I'd encourage you to come to me." Her eyes were on my scar, relieving me momentarily from the weight of her gaze. "I have great plans for you, Lara."

When she said my name, I inhaled sharply. She looked up at me.

"Do you have any others?" she asked about my scar. I nodded mutely. "I'd like to see them."

I looked down at the torso of my top, and then at the crowd of people in the bar. Ms. Natla moved along the seat of the booth, coming up beside me. "No one can see us," she said. "And even if they did, there's no flashing cell phone cameras here, Lara. No one will ever know."

I looked at her, aware of how heavily I was breathing. Lifting the side of my top, I leaned back to show her the pink scar on my stomach. Her hand reached out and her fingertips traced it. I watched every movement, knowing exactly what I wanted her to do with that hand. Go lower, I thought. Go much lower.

She was against me, her lips against my ear. I leaned into them. "I know what you want," she murmured, and then took my earlobe between her lips. "I know exactly what you want."

God, and I wanted her to do it to me. All of it. No one had ever done this to me before; I was absolutely spellbound. She could have asked me to throw myself off a cliff and I probably would have without question.

Her fingertips dipped teasingly into the waist of my pants, it was absolute torture. She kissed my neck and under my chin while I lay back against the booth and her hand stroked across my waist. I wanted her on top of me, pulling off my top just as easily as she said she would and throwing me back against the seat. I wanted her lips all over me and, fuck, I wanted to do it all to her, as well.

How on earth does one person have this sort of power over another?

I was practically melting against the seat when she stopped, suddenly.

I opened my eyes and looked across at her. She was smiling, her eyes heavy-lidded. "I know how to get the best out of people," she told me, shifting across to the other side of the booth and straightening her dress. Then, cruelly, she stood up and lifted her half-finished martini from the table. "You'll thank me for this."

She raised her glass to me, took a drink, and then slipped into the crowd.

I stared after her, dazed.


	15. Chapter 15

I couldn't get up straight away. I almost couldn't believe what had happened.

Around the bar, people circulated and chatted, completely oblivious to what their boss had just done to the lead archaeologist.

Ms. Natla was nowhere to be seen. I had a fleeting thought that she might return with another drink or for some other reason, but I didn't allow myself to get my hopes up. It was a good thing, too, because fifteen minutes later I was still alone. Eventually I managed to convince myself that it was a bad idea to just sit slumped over in a booth the whole evening, especially when I would probably be working rather closely with all these people. Ms. Natla had chosen us seats with the least likelihood of someone accidentally happening upon us, but eventually someone was going to wander over with their friends and find me feeling sorry for myself over my martini.

There was no use sulking over how much I wanted her back here. I could have spent all night with my head back against the booth seat and imagining that perfectly styled blond hair messed up and trailing down my stomach after her lips. It was both terrifying and exciting that she knew that I wanted her, but I couldn't sit here all night desperately hoping it would happen right then.

I drank the rest of the martini and stood up, smoothing the top back over my stomach. The only reason I'd gone down to the bar was because of her. I wasn't sure what I had expected she'd do, but Sam had been right, after all. I'm sure she'd appreciate being told that.

I piqued some interest as I exited – a couple of people were calling out to me to come talk to them. I pretended not to hear and snuck off to the lifts. Hammering the up arrow, I willed the doors to open before anyone accosted me in the corridor. As much as I wanted people to recognise me and be interested in having me as lead, I couldn't face anyone in the state I was in at that moment.

My access card for the hotel room wasn't working. I swiped it in every possible way and still got a series of red lights. I leaned my head against the door for a moment, groaning. Then, I knocked.

Sam answered in her pyjamas, completely sober. She looked genuinely surprised. "That was fast."

"You don't know the half of it," I said dryly as I walked past her into the room.

"What happened?" she asked me, closing the door behind me. "You look kind of..." She considered me. "I don't know, kind of worked up."

"You were right about her," I said, retrieving my own pyjamas from under my pillow where I'd tucked them. There was no way I was going out again, so I might as well get ready for bed. When I tried to get into them, I discovered Ms. Natla had been wrong about the top. It was tight and got stuck halfway off because my shoulder was still a little weak. Sam helped me get it over my head.

"Like, that there's something off about her?"

"That she wanted to hook up with me."

Sam stood back as I pulled on my thin pyjama top. "Really?" she said. I told her what happened as I sat down to take my boots off, and she listened with a mixture of fascination and dismay. While she was digesting what she'd heard, I ducked into the bathroom to change into my pyjama pants and hide another pair of knickers in the bottom of my toiletry bag.

She was still standing where I'd left her when I exited the bathroom. "That's kind of cool," was her final assessment of what I'd told her about Ms. Natla. "I wish I could do that."

I imagined Sam coming onto me in the same manner and couldn't help but grin. She was bossy, but it was more sweet than anything else and there was no way she'd have been able to pull off Ms. Natla's seamless self-confidence and charisma, no matter how extroverted she was.

"Why are you laughing?" she said, and playfully smacked my arm. "I could do it!"

"I've always been kind of impressed by how easily you get people to sleep with you, but you totally couldn't do it the way she did. It was…" I breathed out. "It was intense, I didn't want her to stop. She could have done anything to me."

Sam had an odd expression on her face that I couldn't read. Rather than reply right away, she retrieved her top from my bed and tossed it back into her suitcase without folding it. "You would have gone back with her if she'd invited you, right?"

There wasn't a shadow of doubt in my mind. I would even have let her have me right there, in that booth. "Yes."

She had a faint smile on her face when she stood back up. "I never would have guessed, you know. If someone had asked me like a month ago whether or not you'd go for girls, I'd have been like, 'Nope'."

"You and me both," I said. I sank back on my bed. It was such a weight lifted from me that I didn't have to hide it from her. "It's good to be able to talk about it with you, Sam."

She came over and sat on the edge of my bed beside me, deep in thought for a moment. "I'd probably have gone with her, too."

I knew what she meant. "Yeah, I wondered." When she looked at me, a little surprised, I explained. "Well, that couple you were shagging in Amsterdam. With the amount of time the wife spent topless in clubs I'm pretty sure I correctly pinned her as female." In the spirit of sharing, I tried to decide if I dared continue. "And then I have this memory of you being completely drunk and kissing my neck a couple of nights ago…"

I heard her inhale sharply. "I'm sorry about that," she said, not looking at me. "I don't want to… you know, I don't want to make things awkward between us."

"Don't worry about it," I said. "The way my new boss just left me, I'm about a heartbeat away from throwing you against a railing and kissing your neck, too." I smiled at her, but she didn't return it. She was looking at me with a really strange expression and I wondered if I'd gone too far. "I didn't mean—"

She interrupted me. "It's okay." She looked like she wanted to say something else, but she didn't.

She was so close to me in those tiny pyjamas, and her skin smelt like that mango body butter she loved. I wouldn't have had to reach hardly a few inches to pull her down to me and find out if it tasted like mangoes, too. She was really pretty in this light, and I really needed to get a fucking grip before I did something I would regret. "I wonder if cold showers actually work," I thought aloud.

That made her smile. "They don't," she said. "They just make your skin more sensitive and don't actually solve the problem of wanting someone and not having them."

"Figures." I lay back into my pillow.

"Shove over," she said, and I did.

When she went to lie against me, I laughed. "You really want to do that? I'm not completely sure I can be trusted right now."

"I trust you," she said. It was so sweet that I had to hug her. Her skin was so warm.

I had the remote balanced on top of my bedhead, so after we'd let go I felt around above me and then used it to turn on the telly. There was no use lying here imagining making love to my best friend when it should definitely never happen. We just had to try and find our own line between what was 'friends' and what wasn't and not keep crossing it. It was just harder to figure out where to draw it because we were always so close.

"Can we watch something other than the news?" Sam asked, turning herself more towards the television whilst still cuddled against my side. I could see down her top and I just longed to put my hands down there again. I gave her the remote while I battled with the desire to not just flip her over and push my body against hers.

I wondered if Ms. Natla was downstairs secretly delighting in the torment she'd just caused me.

Sam found the Discovery Channel. There was a documentary following an Arctic Expedition on it, and she seemed pleased to have found it. "It's really hard to find the right equipment to use in such cold conditions," she told me, beginning a torrent of excited technobabble. "Everything looks overexposed if you use ordinary A30s and because of the weather you need special batteries in everything digital."

It was a relief to be talking about something else, even if I was happy we'd finally had that discussion. There was also something incredibly endearing about Sam when she was gushing about things she loved. I kissed her head without thinking, and then wondered if that was too far, again.

She paused what she was saying for a moment, and then continued on about frost and boom mics.

We watched a series of documentaries until quite late. The last one was something about the US election process, and having absolutely no interest at all in the topic, I'd drifted off. I woke up because I could almost feel Sam looking at me.

I opened my eyes. She'd already turned off the telly and at some point had tucked us both in.

"Lara," she said.

"Mmm?" I was really comfortable and intended to move as little as possible.

"Do you ever get that feeling where you're watching yourself do all of this stupid stuff, and you know what you should be saying and doing, but it's like you can't even control what's happening?"

I thought back to signing that bloody contract, and I wondered if she was referring to helping me leave Japan when we had a media circuit to complete for her father. "Yes."

She exhaled, and her words caught in her throat. "I'm there."

She sounded upset and staying comfortable and warm suddenly didn't seem to matter so much. I lift my head from the pillow and turned a little toward her. "Are you okay?" She shook her head. "You want to talk about it?"

She was watching me so intently, her jaw tight. "Yes," she said. "But I just can't."

I slipped an arm under her neck and held her against me. She was crying again, but she was trying smother it. Well, she'd cared so well for me while I was still recovering, I could do the same for her. "I'm here for you when you can," I murmured against her hair.

"I just don't want to lose you," she said eventually. "I'm just so scared I'll lose you, you have no idea." I did have an idea, actually, because it was the same feeling I'd had every second of climbing up that mountain on Yamatai. I didn't understand why she was so scared I was in imminent danger of leaving her right at that very moment, but I supposed it didn't have to make sense. We'd been through a lot.

We fell asleep tangled in each other again, and in the morning I woke up and my arm was completely numb. Also, in the whirlwind that was last night, I'd forgotten to set an alarm. I was hopeless without my iPhone.

I looked over at the clock; it was nearly half eight. I was certain we were supposed to be waiting out the front by then. "Shit!" I shook Sam awake and extracted myself from underneath her, stumbling over to my suitcase. I probably didn't have time for a shower, but after last night I thought I probably needed one anyway.

Sam groaned. "What time is it?"

"It's five minutes before we're supposed to be downstairs."

"What?" She turned over and pulled the duvet over her head. "No…" I pulled it off her as I rushed past to the bathroom, and she called after me, "I'm not going unless you carry me again!"

In the end, we managed to be out in the valet circle only a couple of minutes late. We needn't have worried so much, because people were arriving well after us as we waited for whatever transport had been arranged.

When Ms. Natla emerged, my heart skipped a beat. She wasn't wearing a suit, but jeans, flats and an oversize jumper with a pashmina draped around her neck. Seeing her in casual clothes seemed naughty, somehow, like I was witnessing something secret.

She didn't come over to me straight away, wandering around and greeting people. I felt like she was doing it on purpose. When she did eventually arrive where Sam and I were standing, she put a hand on my shoulder. "You two look like you made a night of it." She laughed. "I thought I told you to get some sleep."

"Missed my alarm," I mumbled.

"I bet you did," she said, looking between us, but her eyes lingering on mine. "I'm a little disappointed I wasn't invited." God, the mental images that elicited…

Sam rescued me. "Are we going by bus?"

She looked ever so slightly annoyed, glancing at Sam and then her watch. "Yes, we are. There are two buses booked and they're late. I should probably call them to find out why they don't want to get paid." She gave me one last look and sashayed off.

I watched her leave before Sam lightly punched my arm. "Earth to Lara."

I shook my head sharply as if it would dislodge Ms. Natla from it. "See what I mean?"

"Yup. I'll totally cheer for you in next year's pride march." She looked past me to where Ms. Natla was standing away from everyone and holding a mobile to her ear. "She dresses really well, though. That sweater is hot." She directed me a mischievous grin. "You need to sleep with her so I can steal it."

I smiled at her, appreciating her attempts at humour. It made the whole situation just a whole lot less daunting. "I'm so glad you decided to come with me, Sam."

She took my hand as the buses pulled in front of the hotel. "Oh, who am I kidding," she said. "I'll totally be beside you in the pride march if they all dress like she does."


	16. Chapter 16

It didn't even occur to me that we wouldn't travel all the way to the excavation site in the two buses. It was a surprise to me that the buses just took us to a small air strip near the outskirts of the city on the edge of the cliffs.

We were deposited by a gate at the base of the strip with our luggage. Looking at all the faces standing around, I realised Ms. Natla wasn't with us. I was in two minds about whether or not I was happy about that; on one hand being near her was intoxicating and I just wanted more of it, but on the other hand I was working and I didn't really want to step on something valuable because I wasn't paying attention.

We were dragging our suitcases inside the airfield when a tremendous thundering noise started over the edge of the cliff. For a split second I expected a spontaneous storm like the ones over Yamatai to appear above us and for the whole city to get pummelled by torrential rain.

We weren't on Yamatai, though.

As we all watched, an enormous double-bladed helicopter rose slowly over the edge of the cliff and came to land in the centre of the strip.

"That would have looked amazing on film," Sam breathed beside me as I struggled to keep my hair out of my face with all the wind roaring off the field.

We were ushered into the cargo-hold, which had seating like a movie theatre and very small windows which were shut tight. "Is this what it's always like?" she whispered to me as I sat down and fastened the belt across my chest. "This is beyond cool."

"Put your seatbelt on," I told her, because she was too busy perched on the edge of her seat, looking all around her like a child in a sweet shop. Around us, all the project workers were reading books or chatting with each other as if they rode in these every day.

When the rotors started, Sam grabbed my hand. "I'm changing careers," she told me. "I'm becoming an archaeologist so I can do this all every day."

"Remember how you feel about reading papers?" I chuckled at her reaction when the helicopter left the ground.

She made a face. "Crush my dreams, why don't you?" She pointed at one of the closed windows. "You think they'd let me look out? The mountains in Peru are supposed to be beautiful. If I can't film them, I should at least see them."

There were several men that reminded me of Larson seated amongst the group. They were looking around just as much as we were, but at us. I spotted a bullet proof vest peeking out of the collar of one of their shirts and felt uneasy about it. Needing armed security wasn't all that uncommon on digs in various countries, but it was unusual for the guards to be so interested in the project workers. "I think they're closed for a reason. The location is probably secret."

"Oh, Ms. Croft!" Someone called across from the row in front of us. "How fabulous it is to have you working with us!"

It belonged to a man who must have been at least seventy years old, seated in the middle of a group of younger workers. He was grey and wrinkled and had his glasses wedged on the end of his nose. The jumper he was wearing was probably nearly as old as he was, and it was paired with a mismatched football scarf. He could be anyone's dear old grandfather, I thought, instantly liking him.

As he extended his hand between the seats, I noticed his fingers were quite arthritic. I was careful as I shook them. "Arthur Chamberlain," he said. "I supervised your father at Cambridge when he did his second doctorate."

That caught my attention.

"I think you left out a title, then," I said. "Professor."

"Yes, yes," he chuckled. "One doesn't like to boast about one's titles, of course." He looked me up and down as if I were a grandchild he hadn't seen in a decade. "Gosh, you look like him, don't you? Such a pity you never attended Cambridge yourself. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about Yamatai." My smile faded and Sam stiffened next to me. "Did you really choose the location yourself?" As he asked that question, I glanced back at Sam to see her swallowing nervously. Professor Chamberlain didn't notice our discomfort at all. I turned my head back toward him and nodded. He looked thrilled. "That's exceptional. Whose works were your basing your hypothesis on?"

I looked at all the faces in the group, all of them clearly his students or his colleagues and they were all interested in my answer. I didn't want to seem like I was boasting myself. I didn't even want to discuss it, not now I had just finally managed to get away from it all.

"I don't really know how to explain my theories," I said. "The myths spoke of Himiko's ability to conjure storms, so I supposed we should be heading into rough weather which is always further westward than all the traditionally proposed locations."

"So you didn't base your theories on any hard research, and yet you still located the island?" he prompted me.

I wasn't sure how to respond to that, it sounded like a trick question they ask you in an exam before they fail you. I nodded again anyway, because I couldn't pretend it wasn't true.

His expression broke into one that had the same joy and pride as he would have given his daughter on her wedding day. "That's simply marvellous," he told me. "Your father was exactly the same, and look at everything he accomplished!"

Something rung a little off about that to me. I knew my father had been involved in a great deal of reasonably minor digs with success, but all his dissertations and theses had always been skirting the supernatural and treated by the industry with an element of ridicule. Even I'd formed about the same opinion of them until very recently. So, either he was mocking my father and I, or he was actually suggesting that my father's work was worth accolades because if the supernatural themes rather than in spite of them. Looking upon him, I could see no suggestion that he was making fun of me. Similarly, his colleagues were all regarding me with such respect.

I wiped my palms on my pants. These people were all on this exploration with me, where no cameras were allowed and where confidentiality was so sacred it was almost ritualistic. There had to be a reason for that, and I was terrified it might have something to do with the themes my father so favoured.

I had very bad feeling about this exploration – very bad. I looked back at Sam and took her hand. I couldn't put her at risk again. I couldn't take her straight into another Yamatai.

At least the Professor noticed my discomfort this time. "I'm sorry to bother you, anyway. I just wanted to let you know how pleased I am that your father's work wasn't abandoned when he disappeared."

I smiled politely at him as they all turned around to carry on their own conversation.

Sitting slowly back against my seat, I stared at Sam's upturned hand across my knees and mine holding it.

"You have fans," she whispered to me, I think mistaking my silence with shyness. "You're nearly famous!"

"They're my father's fans," I said quietly.

She put her other hand on my forearm. "Yours now," she said very gently.

I wasn't sure how to explain to her what I'd just realised. "You know what I used to say about my father's work?"

Sam grinned faintly. "'Ghost stories and fairytales'," she quoted me. "You used to say that about myth of Himiko's powers, as well."

"Yes, I did. Look how that turned out."

Her grin disappeared.

"Those archaeologists?" I nodded at the professor and his colleagues. "I think they subscribe to the same periodicals as my father." I took her other hand, twisting my body to face her. "They all believe those stories and they're on this dig with us." A slight frown was spreading on Sam's forehead. "Which I was headhunted for directly after what happened on Yamatai."

Gradually, recognition dawned on her face. "You don't think they're expecting something like Yamatai here?" She had my hand so tightly.

I looked at her. "I do, I do think that." I sat back against the spine of my seat again, a wave of adrenaline making it difficult for me to stay still. There was no way to get out of this helicopter. I was stuck here with Sam, and we might as well have been flying directly into the Dragon's Triangle.

Sam looked haunted. "But you did it on Yamatai, right? You did it, so you can do it again if it comes to that."

I had done, but I felt as if the only reason I'd managed to was because the planets had aligned for me. Any one of those bullets, or falls, or explosions, or anything, really… any of them could have killed me. And then there were the Oni.

"It's just one tomb," she said, sounding like she was trying to reassure herself more than she was me. "And there's no Solarii."

"I can't drag you into this again." I ignored her attempt to comfort us. "You should go back with the helicopter after we land."

"Are you kidding?" She said it so loudly that several people seated around us turned to look at her for a moment before going about their business. She lowered her voice. "Lara, I'm not going anywhere without you. Anywhere. I'd sew myself to your side if I could. There isn't anywhere safer for me than that."

"I don't want you to get stabbed by a rebar or shot by a—"

"'Us'," she said. I gave her an odd look, and she explained what she meant. "Well, if I was sewn to your side and got stabbed, technically it would be 'us' getting stabbed, not 'me'."

I just stared at her for a moment, blinking. Then I laughed once, because I was struck by how crazy she was and how much I adored her for it.

She was stroking the back of my hand. "We're probably overreacting. How many digs have you been on? It's probably just an empty tomb."

I nodded, closing my eyes and taking another breath. She was probably right. Even if these project workers did all believe in the supernatural, it didn't necessarily mean we were likely to find it on this excavation. I kept repeating that to myself as the helicopter landed.

The base camp wasn't anything unusual at all. A series of tents had been erected and there was various Natla Technologies crates stacked around the perimeter, I assumed for packing and removing anything we dug up. The area itself was a clearing deep in the jungle and appeared to be at the base of two mountains, the very tops of which were snow-capped. A couple of labourers were buzzing around adding the last furnishings to the tents.

"Seems pretty normal to me," Sam said as we walked through it. "Yamatai felt weird. This place just feels cold." I agreed with her.

There was a smaller helicopter on the other side of the camp – and to both my delight and my terror, I could see Larson and Ms. Natla had just alighted from it. There was something comforting about her being here, because I doubted with whatever she might know that she would knowingly put herself in danger. If she was staying on location, it meant we were probably safe for now.

The tents were all assigned, and of course Sam and I were put together.

"They probably think we'll be doing it all night and didn't want us to bother anyone else," she said, carrying her suitcase inside. "Or maybe not," she said once she was in there.

I pushed aside the flap and followed her in. She was staring at the two narrow camping beds.

"That's not deliberate," I told her, putting my suitcase at the foot of one of them. "The beds are always like these ones. I've never seen a double bed in a base camp."

She sat down on one, testing it. "Better than the Endurance," was her assessment. "So what now?"

I shrugged. "Well, we probably won't be able to go on site today," I said. "Normally the engineers need to put all the supports in, first. We just sort of… hang around until the site is safe and we can go in." I looked sternly at her. "By the way, if you think I'm letting within a hundred feet of anything resembling a dig, you're mistaken."

She narrowed her eyes at me playfully. "You're not the boss of me," she said.

"Actually, as your 'lead archaeologist', I can order you to remain in the tent." I was smiling.

She made an exaggerated 'ooh' shape with her mouth, and then went back to normal. "What does that mean, anyway? Whitman was always going on about it."

I shook my head, sitting opposite her on my own bed. "It's a pretty meaningless title, actually. It just normally means you get to sign a lot of papers and get all the credit if significant discoveries get made."

"Awesome, because you just love it when people give you heaps of attention." Her voice was dripping in sarcasm.

During her exploration of the tent, she discovered a window on the other side of her bed. Leaning over, she rolled up the cover. "Wow, it's just beautiful here. Doesn't this jungle make you feel like you're lost in time or something? I bet it's looked exactly the same for thousands of years."

I craned my neck to see the view she was looking at. "It is nice," I said. "Or it would be if it were a little bit warmer."

She stood to get a better look outside. "It would have been great to get some footage of you in this. This stuff, people would find interesting, not like Whitman's flop. I think if we just put you in a low-cut top, bam! Primetime slot." She grinned back at me.

"Such a pity we'll never find out," I said, directing her some of my own sarcasm.

"Knock, knock," Larson's voice said at the flap of the tent, startling us.

Sam recovered first, rolling her eyes. "Don't come in," she said.

He pushed the flap up anyway. "Why, am I interrupting something? Sounds like fun." He winked at her and she practically made a gagging noise.

I didn't say anything, because I was too busy worrying about the shotgun holster he'd strapped onto his back and the fact he'd actually tucked his shirt in.

He looked across at me from under the flap and made a 'come here' motion. "Ms. Natla wants you rigged and ready to go in fifteen minutes. I'm not really up for keeping her waiting. Are you?" He actually seemed a bit worried. It was interesting.

I sat up straight. "What, right now?"

He snorted. "Nah, I'm just going to rig you up now and leave you hanging there overnight." He paused. "Of course 'now', come on."

I stood up. "But…" I looked back at Sam.

"Fine, whatever, bring her along and she can watch. We can make a party of it. Let's just get moving before it's 'off with his head!'."


	17. Chapter 17

Sam and I followed Larson into one of the tents that was set aside for storing equipment. The Natla Technologies crates had been stacked on their sides like square shelves and their contents was surprisingly well organised. I was admiring the neatness of all the brushes and troughs stacking on top of each other when I heard Sam take a breath.

I looked up. Larson was standing over at the far end of the storage tent in front of the most enormous cache of ammunition and weaponry I had ever seen. I was used to seeing explosives – they were sometimes required to get at deeply buried sites – but I'd never seen so many guns on a dig.

He was also completely oblivious to our reaction, whistling as he rummaged through items in various crates.

"I'm guessing you're 'extra small'," he said over his shoulder. "And I bet the only person I'll ever put holsters on who doesn't try to shoot me for calling them that."

"Holsters?" I wasn't doing too well at appearing calm and professional.

"Well, yeah," he said. "You got somewhere better to put your gun?" I didn't like his tone of voice at all as he said that, but I left it.

"There's security everywhere, why would I need a gun?"

"Yeah," Sam muttered next to me. "Isn't the thing about archaeology that everything is already really dead?"

Larson looked back over his shoulder at us, that infuriating spark of amusement visible in his grin. "Just because it's dead don't mean it's not going to attack you."

Sam's jaw dropped, and I was certain I looked about the same.

"This is just too easy." He chuckled. "There's wolves around here. Maybe a few bears, too. Can't send four big guys with you everywhere."

After deliberately scaring the life out of me it would have been a bad idea to give me a firearm, so it was good that when he walked back over to me, he just brought the holsters he'd collected. "You right-handed or left-handed?"

"Well, for writing I'm right-handed…" I tried to think back to Yamatai. I'd used guns in both hands then, depending on which hand was free. "But I don't think it matters."

"It always matters. Just take both of them and you can figure out later which one you want to leave on." He gave me a handful of leather. Sam helped me figure out which was which and strap them across my hips and thighs.

When I was done, Larson beckoned me over to the crates. I walked up to him, wriggling the leather straps to try and make them more comfortable. They were so stiff and tight I couldn't believe anyone had ever worn them before.

He lifted a few small cases out of the crates and opened them; they were different handguns nested in their original packaging. "Pick whichever you want. I already tested them all."

"They look kind of pretty when they're new, don't they?" Sam observed, running her fingers over the brushed steel of a Browning 9x19. She picked it up and held it in a way she probably thought looked professional. Larson rescued it before she could do any damage, handing it to me.

I was already holding a Desert Eagle, so I held the two side by side and tested their weight. I couldn't decide. "Can I take them both?"

Larson grinned at me. "Oh, I'm going to like you." To my question, he shrugged. "Sure, why not. I'm not paying for them." He'd already unpacked a small canvas satchel and he tossed a few extra cartridges into it. I checked to make sure the pistols weren't already loaded and then put them into the holsters.

Conducting my own search of the crates, I found some thigh-high gaiters and skid mesh for my arms which had built in elbow-pads. It was the kind of skin-protecting gear Roth used to use when he abseiled up unstable cliff faces, and it was eerie putting it on all by myself without him joking about how I looked like I should be in roller derby.

"There's a first aid kit in there," Larson said, tossing me the satchel that he finished packing. "Just in case you get shot and need a Band-Aid."

I opened it up to have a peek inside and found a selection of other items, as well. "What's this?" I said, holding up a double-bound A5 book of computer print-outs. I flipped through it.

I had already figured out what the print-outs were before he answered. "I don't know, some geologist bullshit they're pretending are maps. Ms. Natla has this idea you'll find them useful for marking crap on."

Sam was looking over my shoulder. "I see a butterfly in this one," she said, pointing to a cross-section of an Isopach map. "And this one looks like my abusive father." She was joking and I knew her father was nothing of the sort, but Larson looked up and actually was displaying some concern. Sam rolled her eyes. "I was kidding," she told him. "Those things look like those cards psychologists use to diagnose your problems."

"They're maps of the density of the rock," I told her. "They show where the best places to explore will be." She nodded, quickly losing interest in them.

That there were maps like this at all meant that I was going to be the first one inside the dig, and I would be determining where the areas of interest were. That was okay, I thought. I was always more suited to archaeological exploration than brush-digging in cordoned off sites anyway. It might even be quite fun, and at least I wouldn't have to know any local laws.

As Sam helped me put all the gear on, I did wonder if I should really be doing this three weeks after seriously injuring myself. I guessed I would find out.

"How do I look?" I asked, standing up and turning around.

"I'd hit it." Larson smirked, waiting for me near the entrance to the tent.

"'It' hits back," I warned him, looking at Sam for her opinion, since it was hers I'd wanted in the first place.

"Bit overkill on the accessories," she said, grinning. "Maybe should have tried a simple scarf instead." I smiled at her as she adjusted my satchel. "Nah, you look like a pro." I knew that look in her eye: she was trying to figure out which angle would have been the best one to take footage of me from.

I wish I'd had all of this stuff back on Yamatai, I thought as I looked down at it. I wouldn't have had a fraction of the scratches and bruises if I'd had mesh and pads on. Sam smoothed down my t-shirt and nodded her approval.

Larson was watching her assessment of me with far too much attention. When I glared at him he threw up his hands. "Hey, don't stop on my account." He then checked his watch and changed his tune. "Actually, on second thoughts, if you ladies have finished playing dress-ups we have a helicopter to catch."

I followed him out, with Sam right behind me.

We attracted some attention as we walked through the rows of tents. Some of the project workers smiled at me and called out various good wishes. It was a casual enough scene that I wasn't as worried as I should be with two guns strapped to my thighs.

I was disappointed that Ms. Natla was nowhere to be seen as we approached the helicopter, though. I cast my eyes around the site, trying to catch a glimpse of her, but all I saw were ordinary people wandering around.

"Looking for someone?" She said from behind me inside the tiny cabin, making me jump. I blushed.

Sam looked over my shoulder at her, and then back to me. "There's three seats in there," she said. "I'm pretty sure I'm not coming." It was a relief for me to hear that.

Larson climbed up into the cockpit, sitting on one of them. "Plenty of room on my lap," he said, but he clearly didn't expect her to respond because he leaned through the divide into the cabin and said something quietly to Ms. Natla who nodded.

I turned back to Sam. She took both my hands. "Be safe," she said. "You didn't come this far to be killed by some wolf."

I squeezed her hands, and then hugged her. "You be safe, too," I said into her hair. "Just stay in your tent."

I was stepping away from her when she pulled me back into a tighter hug. The next time we parted, she gave me one of her cheeky little smiles and then leaned forward and kissed my lips for a fraction of a second.

It may have looked fairly innocuous to anyone else, but she'd never done that before and it was a shock. A nice shock, but it still silenced me. She looked pleased with herself, touching my hand one last time before moving back away a safe distance from the helicopter. I stood staring at her for a moment, trying to figure out whether she'd just done it to show off to Ms. Natla and Larson or if she had another motive. The way she was standing at the edge of the clearing, smiling at me… Well, I supposed it was too late to tear off all my gear and jump on her.

I closed my mouth. Dangerous ground, Lara, I thought. She's just being a complete exhibitionist and has no idea what it's doing to you.

I climbed up into the cabin, pulling the door shut and taking a seat beside Ms. Natla. Our knees were touching, and she noticed. I could feel her looking at me from under her lashes.

While I was trying to figure out the seatbelt-slash-harness or whatever it was, Larson pulled the engine into gear and the rotors began to spin. He fiddled with some settings on the dashboard, pulling the lever beside his seat slowly up as the helicopter lifted slowly off the ground. I watched him use the controls, fascinated. He was handling them all with the sort of casualness a person would have if they were going to pop down to the store and buy some milk in one.

"He can fly a helicopter?" I asked aloud, thinking he wasn't your average security guard or lackey, or whatever he was.

"Ex-marine," Ms. Natla said, and I discovered why Larson had initially reminded me a little of Roth. "Now," she began, turning those eyes on me. "Has he told you what you need to do for me?"

Why did everything she say sound like it was just a few words away from a proposition? "I'm marking areas of interest on those map things, aren't I?"

She tilted her head. "Not exactly." She crossed her legs toward me. "I mentioned in our first meeting an item I want you to retrieve before I send the rest of the project in."

I knew which item she was referring to. "The Scion?"

She nodded once. "It will be in the main burial chamber. You can use the print-outs to try and locate it, but it could be some distance from the main entrance."

"What if I can't find it?"

She smiled, but there was no warmth. "Find it," she said simply, putting a hand on my knee. "I know you like to explore," there was that tone again, "so put those skills to good use."

I looked from my knee to her face, and then nodded. I can do this, I thought. This was the sort of thing that Roth would have absolutely loved – a sort of high stakes search and retrieve. It would have been much more fun to do with him, but I might enjoy doing it alone, anyway. "Okay," I said, feeling like I finally understood why she'd head-hunted me.

She smiled at me, her red lips pulled into points. "Good girl," she said. "Believe me, I will make it worth your while."

Swallowing, I was terrified I might actually know how she was planning to do that.

Larson's voice was on speaker in the cabin, but I could still hear him a little through the wall of the cockpit. The helicopter was stationary as it hovered in the air. "We're ready to go," he said. "You can probably jump out from here."

Ms. Natla reached onto the seat beside her, and handed me a two-way radio. I noticed all the frequency knobs had been snapped off, jamming the radio onto a single channel. "These don't have much battery, so use it sparingly. Let us know when to come and collect you." Our fingers touched as she gave it to me. "Good luck."

I supposed it was a little too much to hope that she might kiss me on the lips, too.

I hooked it on the back of my pants and unfastened my harness, walking unsteadily across the cabin floor. Once I'd slid the door open, all I could see was white – we'd flown up into the snow caps. It made it impossible to tell how far away the ground was.

"Jump!" Larson yelled to me. With the door open, the wind made it hard to hear him.

"Are you sure?" Knee pads were no good against a hundred-foot drop.

"On the count of three!" he yelled back.

I didn't wait until he got to three, stepping out into the air and shrieking as it rushed past me.


	18. Chapter 18

The ground wasn't as far away as I'd imagined it would be, so it was a surprise when my feet connected with it quickly after I'd left the helicopter. I was in the wrong position to land to suddenly and I fell sideways into the shallow snow. I stood up, hurriedly brushing it off my shoulder and my side so that it didn't melt and make my clothes wet.

With my fringe blowing all over the place, I waved up at Larson. He nodded, and the helicopter veered away from the side of the mountain. The view around me was simply breath-taking; the icy peaks and the deep, green valleys were such a beautiful contrast with each other. Sam would have absolutely loved it.

I'd been dropped at the edge of a low cliff face, quite a way up the mountain. I walked up to it, poking at my ears to try and get them to pop. I couldn't see anything remarkable about the surface at all, so I slung off my backpack and went flipping through the isopach maps and the other data in there to try and figure out why that was the location I'd be left at.

I did eventually manage to figure out that the surface of this cliff was basically hollow, so I supposed that meant there would be a reasonably accessible entrance somewhere. The best way to do that was probably a small amount of C2, but I hadn't seen Larson put any explosives in my satchel. Additionally, I didn't really know what there was to damage inside so it was probably for the best.

I had loaded both my guns and was wondering if I dared to risk starting an avalanche by shooting at the wall, when I noticed some odd shapes in the snow a fair distance above my head. Feeling around for footholds, I climbed up to them to them and brushed off the snow. They looked Incan, and old.

I smiled. Dropping down, I felt around in the snow below them and found the base of two enormous snow doors. I braced my back against one of them and tried to pry the other open, but it only opened a very small distance, which meant these doors would need to be carefully removed for the rest of the project workers and their equipment. I shuddered at the thought of how much it would cost to hire rigging that could winch centuries old doors that probably weighed a tonne each off the side of a mountain.

Once I'd managed carefully squeeze myself into the hole, I realised it smelt. Wolves, I thought, and made sure my guns were accessible. While there was still enough light, I felt around in my bag for the battery-operated torch and the oh-so-attractive headlamp. I supposed there were some good things about not having Sam following me around with a camera 24/7. I switched them both on.

It was difficult to move through the crawlspace holding both the torch and my gun, so through a process of elimination I ended up with just the torch. Hopefully it would help me see far enough that if something was coming toward me, I'd have time to draw a pistol.

I made it to a large opening and stood up, casting the torch around to see where I was. It looked like it lead somewhere, so I followed it.

Outside of the crawlspace the air was surprisingly fresh; I remembered much mustier environments from when Dad and I had been in caves in Turkey. I wondered where the rest of the air was getting in, because the crawlspace couldn't have been the only location.

As the end of the passage, my torch light glinted off a series of green dots as I passed it over the back wall. They looked like eyes; I'd found the wolves.

I shone my torch on them, counting four bodies and slowly drawing a gun. Yamatai still fresh in my mind, I expected them to come bounding toward me, fangs bared and thirsting for my blood. These didn't, they just watched me. The standoff lasted several seconds and then they all retreated into another hole in the rocks. I kept my torch where they'd disappeared through for a few moments, and then let it drop.

That experience made me really nervous about all the possible holes in the rocks around me. I searched them but found nothing.

The way down from the corridor was actually up. There were a series of ledges – perhaps old dividing structures – between that corridor and the next. I made it over the ledges with minimal effort and dropped down into a huge cavern.

My torchlight hardly made a dent on the space, so I stood in the corner and ran the light over the walls. To my absolute delight, I found a perfectly preserved bridge across the centre of the space and a series of stone pillars. I approached them and couldn't help myself – I wanted to touch them. I felt the rough stone under my fingers and could almost hear my father's voice yelling at me that skin oils could discolour and damage the rock. I made some annotations on the print-outs.

I didn't put the book away, either, because as I progressed through into another space, there were so many structures and carvings that I basically had to mark everything my torchlight hit.

When I'd finished exploring the room and looked down at my map, I saw I'd drawn several different buildings. I was in an ancient underground village, and although I was no expert on Peru, I knew exactly what Natla Technologies had found and what I was standing in: Vilcabamba.

An enormous smile spread across my face and I could have jumped up and down. It was so exciting, nothing in the world felt like this! My ribs were still a little tender, but I completely ignored them, exploring even inch of that space. I climbed up broken stairwells and across onto landings, tracing where ancient footsteps must have trodden as residents went about their everyday lives.

I had just so much energy and my heart was literally singing. Yamatai and Japan and everyone felt just so far away and I felt so completely liberated.

"Can I stay here?" I asked myself aloud, shining my torch down into gap in one of the walls and finding a tiny gold box. Any other professional would have left it exactly where it was to be carefully cataloged and removed later, but I didn't have that sort of willpower. I marked the maps where I'd found it and held it in front of my face in the light. I didn't know enough about the Incas to know exactly what it was, but it was too small for food. Perhaps it was a medicine box? I felt horribly guilty about moving it, but it didn't seem in anyway fragile so I wrapped it in some of the bandages from the first aid kit and placed it in the bottom of my bag. My mother and father would have absolutely killed me for taking it, as would have all of my professors, but I was fairly certain Ms. Natla was only concerned about The Scion.

Remembering it, some of my jubilation faded. I supposed I would have to leave the ancient village and keep searching for the burial chamber.

I'd found a staircase that lead down on the other side of the space, so I headed toward it. I could hear a body of rushing glacial water and was trying to find the source when something moved beside me.

Taking a breath, I swung my torch around to face it and found the light shining right into the mouth of a huge black bear which was galloping toward me.

Its mouth was wipe open displaying two rows of teeth covered in foam saliva, and when I shone the torch on it, it roared.

I stepped backwards reaching for my pistols, but my foot didn't connect with anything and I found myself falling. I was screaming as my back connected with the surface of the water I'd been looking for. My mouth filled with it before I could clamp it shut, and a strong current sucked me underneath.

Despite the fact I was being tossed around like I was in a pitch black washing machine and I couldn't breathe, the main thing I was aware of was just how numbingly cold it was. I may have hit rocks or scratched myself on the riverbed but I couldn't feel my skin at all so I wasn't certain what was happening.

I reached out around me, my hands searching for something to grab onto as I desperately tried to not draw a breath. Then, I was thrown over a ledge into the air and I was falling again. I kept bracing myself for impact with hard rock, but it never came. My side connected with more water, and then I was finally still.

I found the surface, spitting the water out of my mouth and taking a few desperate gasps of air. I was somehow still alive. When that knowledge had sunk in and I'd relaxed again, I saw I had arrived in a drop pool, and my torch was at the base of the waterfall. I swum over to in, ducking under the surface briefly to retrieve it. In the process, I realised the area behind the waterfall was hollow.

I was then stuck with a dilemma. There was a light source coming from the other side of the drop pool, but under the waterfall there was old carvings etched with gold. I suspected it was the burial chamber Ms. Natla was so interested in. I thought that before I explored it I might just double-check if there was a way out that didn't involve running into the bear again.

I was hesitant to get out of the water in case there were more bears here as well, but when I decided my choice was between definitely giving myself hypothermia and potentially being attacked by another bear it turned out there wasn't much of a choice. I pulled myself out, jogging up and down and shaking my arms to try and get some warm blood back into my limbs.

The light source came from another doorway that lead into a huge valley. It was mostly shielded by heavy overhanging rock from either mountain, and was full of fat-leafed jungle plants and thick moss. I could hear insects buzzing as I walked out into it.

The ground near the doorway was threaded with enormous roots and so I sat on one of them in a shard of warm sunlight, swinging my backpack around to inspect the damage. The print-outs were completely soaked, but at least the ink hadn't run. I wouldn't be making any more notes on them now, but I was able to pull leaves from a jungle palm next to me to separate the pages so they didn't dry shut.

While I was fussing with the notes, there was a deep rumbling noise.

I looked up the moss-covered rock face, wondering if I should be worried about an avalanche. I couldn't hear anything else, so I went back to the book.

Again, I heard it, this time feeling it deep in my ribs. It was the same sort of feeling that I'd had in Japan during small earthquakes. I supposed mountain ranges normally fell on fault-lines, so perhaps Peru suffered from quakes from time to time. It was probably safer for me to move away from the rock, just in case.

I walked toward the centre of the large clearing, swinging my backpack on. As the shaking became more regular, I unhooked the radio from my belt, thinking that perhaps Larson or Ms. Natla would know what was going on.

It seemed a little weird to use proper radio protocol when I knew only one of those two would be listening. I squeezed the push-to-talk. "Hello?"

There was a pause. "Well, hello. Do you have it?" It was Larson's voice.

"Not yet. There are some… rock movements or something." Another one sounded. "Are you using explosives?"

"We're having lunch."

"Then what…" As I reached the centre of the clearing, I completely forgot what I was saying. There was something enormous moving about the trees at the far end. I couldn't figure out what it was at first, because I'd never seen anything so big, but then it lifted its head up.

I almost dropped the radio. It was a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

"Speechless?" Larson's voice prompted me.

It couldn't be real, could it? I watched it moving slowly above the tree line, sniffing their air. It certainly looked like it was alive. Every time it took another step, the ground shook.

"Lara?"

I lifted the radio back to my mouth. "Larson. There's fucking dinosaurs in here."

"Huh," he said, but he didn't sound that impressed. I could hear him walking away from where he'd been because the ambient noise behind him wasn't audible when he spoke that time.

"That's not the least bit surprising to you?"

"I've been working with Ms. Natla for six years. Nothing is surprising anymore." He paused transmission. "Can you take it down?"

It was bigger than a London bus. "There aren't enough bullets in the world to take that thing down. Why would I want to, anyway? It's just… God," I shook my head at it. "That is just amazing. How on earth have they survived here for hundreds of thousands of years?"

"Why are you asking me that? Aren't dinosaurs right up your alley?"

I snorted. "You're thinking of 'paleontologist'." I realised I was standing in the middle of the clearing and would be obvious to anything else looking for food. "I should go back before I find out if there are any others."

After staring at it for a few more minutes, completely unable to believe I might be the only living person to ever have seen a dinosaur, I went back into the cavern.

Sam would have absolutely wet herself to film this; if she thought my cleavage was going to guarantee a primetime slot then what would she think about an actual dinosaur? I was the luckiest person on the planet. However angry I had been at Larson for harassing me to sign the contract, I completely forgave him. I just couldn't wait to get back to Sam to tell her; I wondered if it might earn me another kiss.

I stopped briefly to write some coordinates carefully on my wrist. There was sky above the valley so I figured we could take the helicopter over it with a film crew - surely Ms. Natla wouldn't mind what we did with cameras after the relics had been retrieved, right?

Rather than swim through the water again, I stepped carefully around the edge of the waterfall to enter the burial chamber.

Like any self-respecting tomb, it was fitted with various traps which were ridiculously easy to disarm. Half of the mechanisms didn't work anymore, anyway. The only real problem I had was with hung door that didn't open. To any of the other project workers, it would have barred their passage. To me, I flattened myself against the floor and squeezed my small body through it. It was so narrow that I almost felt as if I wouldn't have made it if I'd had a bigger breakfast.

The burial chamber was open like a throne room.

Qualopec himself had been embalmed in a very similar fashion to the way Egyptian pharaohs were, and sat upright on a throne on the far wall. His face was covered by a gold mask, and he appeared to be strapped to artificial limbs that looked like the legs of an insect. Around him were various mummies that had been propped upright in a very Egyptian fashion. I went closer to inspect one and scared the absolute daylights out of myself when it fell toward me.

Heart going a million miles an hour, I stood back with my pistols pointed at it for several seconds. Then, I thought I heard Qualopec move, so I pointed my pistols at him. He was still completely still, but noticed his hair was still poking out of his mask. In the light of my headlamp it actually looked blond. That was odd, I thought, he had died quite young and there was no sunlight here to bleach it of its colour. Incas didn't tend to be blond, so I found it to be a significant detail.

On the wall above him I recognised the symbol of Atlantis; it was exactly the same one my father had doodled for me once. Ms. Natla was right, I thought, and so was my father.

While I was moving away from the throne to pick up my torch from where I'd thrown it in a panic, I stepped on something on the floor. I jumped off it, but a mechanism was already turning. In the centre of the room, a pedestal rose out of the chamber, revealing a tiny object that was glowing.

I approached it slowly, wondering it whatever was causing it to glow was also dangerous. In addition to creating its own light, it was suspended in the air. I gingerly waved my hand underneath it. Then, I felt around the pedestal for metallic plates that might be causing it to be airborne.

In the end, I had to concede that it was probably magic. I looked back at Qualopec and his mummies, feeling very uneasy even though they were completely still.

Everything was quiet, though, until I plucked the Scion out of the air.

The whole chamber began to shake as if the Tyrannosaurus Rex were running around inside it. A huge slab of rock fell from the ceiling and landed next to me, and I tore out of the chamber, glad of the skid mesh on my arms as I squished myself under the doorway to get out. Before I stood up, I shone my torch under the doorway through the debris. To my horror, I saw one enormous insect leg shudder and lift off the ground as the whole chamber collapsed on itself.

No wonder my father and all those occult archaeologists were so interested in this place. God, I hoped it was all well and truly buried.

While I was standing up and brushing myself off, I felt something cold on the back of my neck. I clamped my mouth over a shriek.

"I'll be taking that," Larson said as I put my hands in the air, feeling the barrel of a shotgun pressing into my skin. First he took my pistols and threw them into the water behind him, and then he tried to uncurl my hand that had the Scion in it. I could feel him a close distance behind me, and for a moment I had a horrible flashback of Russian being yelled next to my ear.

"Aren't we on the same side?" I asked him, my voice shaking. I didn't let go of the relic.

He appeared to consider that, and then I felt the shotgun leave my neck. "Force of habit," he said, and I turned very slowly around, just in case he changed his mind. "Sometimes contractors like to take the trinkets for themselves when they see how nice they are, and that usually ends up in a gunfight."

"I just want to look at it first," I told him. I actually had absolutely no intention of handing it over, especially after the way he'd greeted me. I wondered if it was Ms. Natla or Larson who didn't trust me.

Larson narrowed his eyes at me, and then nodded, taking a few steps back.

I looked down at it in the palm of my hand; it was beautiful. The circular metal looked as it if had been dipped in oil and then wet, sparking all the colours of the rainbow. Some of the tiny intricate details of the carvings glowed so brightly they left echoes on my retinas when I looked away. It felt ancient, and I didn't know how else to describe it: dormant. It felt dormant, like it was still waiting for something. It was waiting for me to do something. I wondered if it had something to do with the dinosaurs.

I looked back at Larson, who was also waiting for me. I noticed he was covered in blood, and had his arms crossed with the gun clutched by his waist. I didn't want that blood to be mine. What if the only thing Larson wanted with me was this part of the Scion? I didn't want him to shoot me after I'd given it to him. I also didn't want him to shoot me if I didn't give it to him. It seemed like a catch twenty-two, because whatever option I chose, it ended up in me getting shot.

While he was relaxed, I tucked the Scion in my pocket and reached forward to grab the barrel of the shotgun with both hands. Then, I smacked him in the back of the knees with it. He yelled and fell backwards, almost into the water. I stood a safe distance away from his legs and pointed it at him.

"Joke's on you, girl," he said. "I used my last shell on that goddamn bear." He stood up and shook out his knee. "That hurt," he told me, sounding a little sore himself. "At least Pierre had the courtesy to knock me out before beating me around."

"Pierre?" Wasn't that the name of the angry Frenchman at the briefing? I snapped the shotgun open to check if it was really empty, and it was. I groaned.

"…Du Pont," Larson continued, approaching me. "Have you met?"

"Sort of." When he got too close, I looked at the empty shotgun again, and then swung it at his head like a baton. I was acutely aware he had me against a dead end and there was probably only a short distance I could travel before I wouldn't be able to retreat any further.

He ducked. "Jumpy, aren't you? Ms. Natla's original idea was that you and he would work together getting the parts of the Scion. He refused. We don't really know where he is now, probably soaking his sorrows in alcohol somewhere." He was advancing on me slowly. "Will you just give me the Scion, already? I don't get paid unless she gets it, and I'm not taking any chances. I'm not going to hurt you."

I didn't believe him for a second. "Don't come any closer," I told him as I backed against the rubble.

Almost as a challenge, he stepped into me, the tips of his boots touching mine. Despite all his flirtatious bravado, he didn't try to touch me anywhere or take the Scion out of my pocket. He didn't even comment about my wet clothes clinging to me. Instead, he put one hand around the barrel of the gun above where mine were. "Now, are you going to let go and give me the Scion so we can both get out of here?"

I had one of those crystal clear moments where I knew exactly what to do. He was expecting me to pull the shotgun towards myself, so, instead, I forced it upwards suddenly into his chin. He dropped like an anvil.

While he was groaning on the ground, I stood over him. "I'm a big girl, I can give it to her myself."


	19. Chapter 19

By the time I dragged myself out of the crawlspace and out into the sunlight again, I was cold, hungry and exhausted. My muscles were so sore they were shaking – or, at least, I think they were. It could just have been that I was shivering. I should have wanted to cry with how exhausted I was, but I didn't. I wanted to run. My head just felt so deliciously clear, everything just made such perfect sense. I couldn't remember feeling this good.

Larson had somehow found a flat surface and landed the helicopter nearby, and I could see a pair of legs in skinny jeans crossed inside. For a moment I thought it might actually be Sam, and then I remembered who'd been in the helicopter in the first place. Besides, these legs were much longer.

As she heard me approach, Ms. Natla stood, stepping gracefully out of the helicopter and crossing some of the distance between us. She was still beautiful, but so preoccupied that she didn't have any of her normal sensual self-confidence.

When she reached me, she saw Larson's shotgun tucked behind my satchel on my back and poking out next to my ear. "Did you kill him?" she asked me. I couldn't read her at all, but her lack of emotion suggested that she wouldn't have cared at all if he was. I thought they'd seemed quite friendly.

I shook my head, breathless. "No, he's coming."

She was hardly even listening to my reply. "Do you have it?" Her anticipation was almost palpable.

I nodded, taking the Scion out of my pocket and holding it out to her. As she reached toward it, it hummed in my hand like a struck pitchfork. She didn't even need to touch it – it lifted out of my hands slightly as she accepted it. She looked down at it sitting above her palm, murmuring. "It's been so long…"

I stood shivering and watching the display, understanding why she didn't want cameras anywhere. I was a little put out that the Scion fragment didn't hum for me, and I wondered if there was a reason that it did for her. "What does it do?"

She looked up at me for a moment, as if surprised I was still there. "Nothing without the other fragments."

"Two more," I said.

She nodded once. I wanted to ask what it would do when they were found, but felt like it might bother her if I asked too many questions. I wished I didn't care so much about whether I bothered her or not, because I was dying to know everything about the Scion. It was one of those times when I really wished I could go rushing to my father and show him what I'd found.

While Ms. Natla was admiring it, I felt the shotgun lift out from behind my bag. "So kind of you to carry this back for me," Larson's voice said. I jumped away from him, but he didn't make any attempt on me. He just stood beside Ms. Natla casually as if I had never knocked him half-unconscious.

Ms. Natla looked up at him and double-took. I turned as well, and saw that the spot on his jaw where I'd hammered him with the shotgun barrel had a wide gash on it. It had bled all over his chin and down his neck, mingling with the other blood that stained his shirt.

He was watching Ms. Natla with the Scion fragment like it was the most normal thing in the world to be covered in blood. "Guess I'm getting paid after all."

She raised an eyebrow at us.

I didn't want her to think I had beaten up her employee for the fun of it. "He pulled that gun on me," I said defensively.

That made her smirk. She shared a glance with Larson and turned, heading back toward the helicopter. "That sounds familiar."

We followed her back. "It does?" I asked, climbing into the cabin with shaking muscles as Larson swung into the cockpit.

Before she sat down, Ms. Natla took a leather pouch with long strings from her purse and dropped the Scion fragment into it. She then slipped the cord over her head and dropped it inside her jumper. "When I first met Larson, he put a gun against my head, too." She reached up above my own head and took a plastic-wrapped bag from the cargo shelf which she handed it to me. It was light. "I put him in jail for fourteen months."

"And then she hired me," Larson said over the speaker. "And we lived happily ever after." He was being very sarcastic: clearly it wasn't a very fond memory for him.

I listened, unwrapping the plastic as I sat down. It was a thermo blanket. I was so cold, she couldn't have offered me anything else in the world that I would have appreciated more. Forgetting for a moment she wasn't Sam, I threw my arms around her and hugged her. "Oh, my God, you're a lifesaver," I said, quickly pulling away from her and tearing off my satchel so I could wrap myself completely in the blanket. "I am completely numb. Thanks so much."

She hadn't expected me to hug her, but to her credit she had gracefully accepted it, her face lit with calm amusement. Was there nothing that surprised this woman? "If I'd known you'd be this excited about a blanket, I'd have taken a zero off your paycheck."

"Well, I'm easy to please," I said, trying to find a way to fit the harness over the thick blanket. The next thing on my list of must-haves was steaming cup of tea and one of Sam's shoulder massages.

"Are you." There was that tone again. I could feel her looking at me as she slid the door shut.

Larson pulled the helicopter off the ground and I sat back in the blanket rubbing my hands on my skin and trying to get some feeling back into them. I couldn't wait to tell Sam about the dinosaurs and the Scion Fragment. I hoped that Ms. Natla would let me show it to her.

"Just out of curiosity," Ms. Natla said after several minutes of watching me. "Why exactly did Larson pull a gun on you?"

I wasn't sure what she was expecting me to have done, but there was audible suspicion in her voice.

"I think he thought I was going to take off with the Scion instead of giving it to you."

She laughed once. "He's an idiot." I agreed, but I wasn't sure why it was so funny. She was looking directly at me. "Samantha."

I knew what she meant, and it chilled me much more than being soaking wet in the open air had. Sam was in the base camp, Ms. Natla wasn't worried about me leaving without her. I suddenly knew why they had invited her along.

She was watching me as I realised all of this, and it must have shown on my face because she smiled darkly. I had a horrible thought of arriving back to the camp and finding Sam tied up somewhere. All of my previous good mood disappeared as I remembered the look on her face when Mathias had lit branches under her feet.

Ms. Natla put a steadying hand on my knee. "Calm down, she's fine. I was just making a point."

"I want to see her."

"You will," she said, removing the hand and patting me once. "In a few minutes. Then we'll discuss payment."

I tried to sit still for the rest of the trip, but all I could think of was the fact that Ms. Natla had made the conscious decision to invite Sam as insurance against me breaking the contract – as if the six figure severance clause wasn't enough. I should send Sam back to Japan, I thought, that would be the smart thing to do. On the other hand, if I did she would be somewhere other than with me and I would miss her horribly, especially with the restricted phone and internet access.

I didn't want to break the contract, anyway – not with all the amazing things I was being giving the opportunity to see and do. But, Sam...

I sighed as my thoughts tangled themselves up again. I wished I could just turn around and crawl back into Vilcabamba.

When the helicopter landed, I didn't care how rude it seemed. I jumped out of it with the blanket trailing behind me and went running off to find our tent.

I pushed aside the flap, taking a big breath to greet her and then stopped in my tracks and clamped my mouth shut.

Sam was sleeping peacefully her narrow bed with a book about Atlantis she must have borrowed from someone open across her chest. She was on her back, which meant she was snoring a little. I smiled, releasing the breath I'd taken. Ms. Natla was right, she was safe, and I was probably being paranoid again. I guessed I'd have to wait for my shoulder massage, though.

I didn't want to wake her, so I very slowly unzipped my case and took my toiletry bag, towel and a fresh set of clothes out. She'd probably be awake by the time I came back from the shower, anyway. Then I could tell her about the dinosaurs and the Scion.

When I exited the tent, I realised I didn't know where the showers were. Usually they were set up a little away from the main camp on a slope, so I thought I would give that a shot. Because the whole camp was quite a posh setup, I was also reasonably sure that there would be something that heated the water, too.

Larson was on his way to his own tent, proudly wearing his blood. All eyes were following him, which meant I was able to slip by without being noticed and asked for details of my exploration. I spotted a large tent pitched away from the others and assumed it was probably what I was looking for; it looked large enough to hang showers in. I made my way awkwardly down to it on my shaking legs and gingerly pulled aside the flap to peek in and make sure I was in the right place.

What I actually saw was the top of Ms. Natla's blond head as she sat at a desk facing the doorway. She had taken the Scion out of the leather pouch and was admiring it, again.

She looked up when she saw me, her eyes traveling from my blanket to my bundle of clothes to my surprised face. "I take it Samantha is fine." She knew the answer.

I felt a bit stupid. "She's asleep. I was going to…" I looked down at the bundle in my arms. The towel was on top of it.

She smiled slightly. "Then come in."

I did so, although I wasn't really sure why she'd invited me. At least I wasn't until I saw that her tent had a wet area hoisted at the rear of the main room.

My heart sped a little.

"We need to discuss payment, anyway. You can kill two birds with one stone."

I walked gingerly past her to the wet area, and she turned her swivel chair to follow my progress. When I reached the shower, I realised that there was no divider curtain to separate the spaces. Oh, my God. I glanced back at her. The shower was in full view of her desk.

"So," Ms. Natla began, her half-smile pulling her lips. "You'll notice your payment comes in three portions. I imagine you've already gathered what triggers the events that result in your payment being transferred. I have a couple more items for you to retrieve. Can you imagine what they might be?"

I could, so I nodded. I wondered if there would be dinosaurs with the others, too.

"I think that Professor Chamberlain is probably perfectly capable of cataloging relics to his heart's content without a Croft to gaze adoringly at," she said. "This will be enough." She patted an item that was beside her on the desk - it was my jungle-leaf-filled notebook with all the markings in it. She'd put it under a kerosine lamp to dry. "Want to earn some more money and look for the next fragment?"

I was shivering again, although probably not from the cold since I had the blanket wrapped around me. To be honest, payment was the last thing I'd been thinking about. I didn't really care at all about the money, but it would probably be a really bad idea to tell my boss that. I looked around for something I might be able to strategically drag in front of the shower, but I knew I wouldn't find anything.

"But you don't care about the money, do you, Lara?"

I inhaled sharply.

"What is it you care about, then?" she mused, crossing one leg neatly over the other and leaning against the backrest of her chair. "I bet right now, all you care about is a warm shower." She nodded at the wet area behind me. "Go on."

The way she was grinning at me… God, it was both terrifying and exhilarating. There was something thrilling about all the adrenaline she was able to conjure so easily in me. After my success in Vilcabamba, I felt inspired to take more risks.

I placed my bundle on the floor away from the shower and removed the blanket, rolling it and putting it beside my clean clothes.

Facing her, I removed the gaiters, the skid mesh, the empty holsters and my boots and socks.

I took a deep breath.

Ignoring my protesting muscles, I lifted my damp t-shirt over my head and held it for a moment before dropping it on the ground. Reaching behind my back, then I undid my sports bra and shrugged out of it, dropping it on top of my discarded t-shirt.

I could feel the cold air on the bare skin of my breasts, but not as much as I could feel the weight of her gaze.

I wasn't wearing a belt, so I only need to undo a couple of studs at the top of my army pants before I could unzip them. Normally I would have just kicked off my knickers with them, but I decided to remove them in two separate steps for her.

When I was completely naked except for my pendant, she spent a good period of time letting her eyes leisurely travel over all of my body. I looked down at myself and only saw the scars that had already been healing; it was too early after Vilcabamba for any bruises to show properly.

I also had some new muscle in my arms and thighs; I liked how the contours looked.

So did Ms. Natla, who slowly rose out of her chair and approached me.

I may have been reasonably confident about taking my clothes off, but any confidence I had disappeared completely as she stood over me. She was so tall, I felt tiny and fragile compared to her. I was practically quivering.

She lifted a hand and stroked her finger tips almost appraisingly from my shoulder to my elbow. I watched her hand, hardly able to breathe; I had no idea what she was planning but I was desperate to be touched.

"You're braver than I thought," she said. "What is it you want me to do with this, exactly?"

Oh, God, I couldn't…

"Because if you don't tell me, how am I going to know?"

I was shaking. "I thought you said you know what I want."

She took my chin in a pincer grip, forcing me to look up at her. "Cocky, aren't we? I want you to say it. Tell me what you want me to do." I absolutely couldn't get any words out of my mouth. The half-smile was still on hers. "Perhaps I should wake Samantha up."

My lips parted.

"She might quite like to be part of this, don't you think? Shall we ask her?"

Yes, I thought, get Sam in here and order her to do things to me. When I imagined Ms. Natla ordering Sam to take off her clothes and kneel in front of me…Wow, I wanted that. I wanted Sam's lips kissing me everywhere they could reach and I wanted to push her against Ms. Natla's desk and do the same to her. I was sore, and shaking, and tired and hungry, but I still wanted her. I could push it out of my mind as much as I fucking liked, but I knew it was true. And so did Ms. Natla.

"Yes," I whispered. I knew it was what she was expecting to hear.

Her smile was so incredibly dark, I was frightened by it. "Maybe we'll all get the opportunity to explore that idea," she said. "At some point."

She took a step away from me, wandering back over to the desk and putting the Scion fragment back in the pouch around her neck.

"Enjoy your shower," she said. "I think you'll probably want to have a long one."

She looked back over her shoulder at me and went to exit the tent. I called out to her, and she turned back, amused. "Yes?"

"I said, where are you going?" I think I'd called her a rather choice insult, too, but I didn't dare to repeat it.

She raised a perfect eyebrow at me. "I'm going to go and watch with great pleasure as Qualopec's treasured personal belongings are dug up and sold to the highest bidder before we leave." She sounded like a jilted wife. "And then," she said, "I'm going to make a certain Frenchman redundant. Or rather, you are."

I was still breathless, so I couldn't ask for greater detail.

She took a measured breath. "You are exceptional, Lara Croft," she told me, looking me up and down again. "And exactly who I am looking for."

When she turned to leave again, I didn't stop her. I did take her advice and have a very, very long shower though. It was difficult to get too much enjoyment of it, however, because I think she'd deliberately left the tent flap unbuckled and it fluttered a little in the breeze.

After I'd dressed again and recovered from whatever had just happened, I put everything into the blanket and carried it all back to the tent.

I had expected Sam to already be up and wondering where I was, but she wasn't. She didn't tend to have long naps in the middle of the day. It was odd.

I sat down on my bed and watched her for a few minutes, relishing the opportunity to just look at her without worrying she might catch me. I was always struck by how pretty her face was; I supposed I should have thanked her mother for that. She just had such beautiful porcelain skin and such lovely lips. They'd kissed mine, I thought. I then spent a few minutes imagining what would have happened if Ms. Natla had called Sam into the tent with us. Sam hadn't pulled the blanket over her legs, so the shape of her hips and thighs was visible through her cotton leggings.

I want you, I thought. If you wake up right now, I'll tell you. I waited for a moment, and to my relief she didn't wake up.

I should probably wake her, anyway. She'd want to hear about the Scion, Vilcabamba and the dinosaurs. I should probably also tell her about Qualopec, too, I thought, although I was a little worried that it might remind her too much of Himiko.

I put a hand on her arm. "Sam?"

She didn't even stir. That was odd, she was normally quite a light sleeper.

I shook her a little. "Sam?"

This wasn't right. I moved to the edge of her bed, shaking her more forcefully. "Sam, what's wrong? Wake up!"

I felt for her pulse – it was very slow, but steady and strong, just like her breathing.

I stood up, putting my hands on my head and feeling the floor almost drop out from underneath me.

Sam had been drugged.


	20. Chapter 20

I must have checked her pulse a hundred times while I was sitting there, my own heart pounding. Each time she was still alive, but it was small comfort.

What I wanted to do was rush out and confront Jacqueline Natla, preferably after a visit to the camp's arsenal cache. I'd stupidly left my pistols at the bottom of the drop pool where Larson had thrown them because I didn't want be around him for very long after the shotgun incident. He hadn't seemed particularly intent on hurting me, but I'd not wanted to take any chances. Right now, though, I wished I had taken that extra minute or so to retrieve them.

I just didn't understand why that woman would have done this to Sam. It made no sense at all; she didn't need to do it in order to ensure I brought the Scion back. On Yamatai, Mathias only wanted to leave the island. But here in the jungle, there is nothing Ms. Natla could have done that made it more likely to make sure that I never retrieved another relic for her ever again. It seemed so counter-intuitive for her to do anything to Sam while I was cooperating with her.

Reflecting on the encounter in her tent, the more I remembered it, the more I thought Ms. Natla was using Sam in every possible way to get at me. God, and I'd undressed in front of her and basically invited her into my knickers. I could have beaten my head against a wall with how stupid I felt, if there had have been any.

I looked back Sam. Well, I'd carried her before, and I'd been in even worse shape then. We couldn't stay here. In a million years I'd never have expected Ms. Natla to drug her, so I couldn't predict what else she might do to her.

Before I picked Sam up, I backed up to the tent flap and peeked out of it. Larson had emerged from his tent washed and in clean clothes. He was chatting to another of the security guards about the gash on his chin. He actually seemed proud of it. As much as I wished I'd killed him, I had to concede I much preferred Larson's way of making sure I didn't take that the Scion fragment over Ms. Natla's. Of course, his attempt hadn't been successful, which was perhaps why I preferred it. I noticed he still had the shotgun on his back, and he'd had plenty of opportunity to load it.

Looking around at several of the security guards, I was reasonably certain all of them were concealing weapons. The position of my tent meant that it would just not be possible to carry Sam out without us being seen in the wide open clearing. We'd potentially both be stopped – maybe even shot if that's what Ms. Natla had told them to do – if I tried to do that. There were also project workers everywhere and I couldn't put their lives at risk in the crossfire.

I closed the flap, looking around our tent for anything I could use as a weapon. There wasn't much at all, and when I tried to break one of the legs off the temporary bed it just wouldn't budge. In the end, all I found were a pair of nail scissors. Sam's book looked heavy, too, and carrying it wouldn't make me too obvious.

Perhaps I could create some sort of disturbance to distract everyone so we could sneak out?

I agonized over what to do, but all roads lead to me leaving Sam alone for a short period of time. Anyone could do anything to her like this, if they knew she was unconscious. I rolled her onto her side into the recovery position and worried some more. Maybe I should just wait until she woke up? Surely they couldn't have used anything on her that would last more than a few hours. I could just pretend everything was fine and I hadn't noticed, and then at night time we could both disappear into the jungle.

I couldn't be sure anything wouldn't happen to us in the meantime, though, because I had no idea what Ms. Natla's intentions were anymore.

I put the back of my fingertips against her cheek. I hoped she would forgive me for leaving her for a few minutes, because I would never forgive myself if anything happened to her. God, I couldn't even bear to imagine it. She stirred ever so slightly as I gave her one last look.

Taking a few deep breaths to calm myself, I picked up the book and walked slowly out of the tent. None of the security guards was paying me much attention. It turned out I had more trouble with the project workers.

"Ms. Croft!" I swore internally as Professor Chamberlain came over to me. "You look absolutely buggered. I take it the exploration went well?"

"Very well, but I'm quite tired, unfortunately, so if you don't mind, I'll—"

He was too excited to let me go that easily. I tried to surreptitiously look back over my shoulder toward our tent. No one was anywhere near it. "Did you find anything of interest? There are some fascinating stories about localized earthquakes in these mountains, verified by seismic measurements. No one's really ever bothered to study it, though, it being so near fault-lines. I'm sure it has something to do with whatever is hidden inside this mountain—"

"I'm sorry, Professor, really. I've got to go." He was so sweet, I felt awful about being so rude, but Sam's wellbeing was far more important.

His face fell. "Yes, yes, of course," he gestured in the direction I'd been walking, which was towards the arsenal tent. "Off you go, I'm sure we'll have the opportunity to talk after you've rested."

In the meantime, my reluctance to talk to Professor Chamberlain had drawn the attention of one of the guards. He made eye contact with me, and then looked at the tent where I was headed. Shit, I thought. I can't let him know that that's where I'm going. I walked up to him. "Do we have a library here?" I asked, knowing full well there wouldn't be one.

He looked at me like I was crazy. I preferred that he think I was crazy than thinking I was on my way to load up on weapons, though.

"No," he said. "Ms. Natla has some comm equipment, though. You could probably ask her if you could search the Internet for whatever you're after." He must not have seen me come out of her tent before or seen her leave it, because he pointed down the hill toward it. "Her tent's that way."

It turned out to be a smarter plan than I'd thought, because the other security guards saw me being directed to Ms. Natla's tent and didn't bat an eyelid as I walked down the hill toward it.

I couldn't get in the arsenal tent yet, but probably if I looked around Ms. Natla's 'office' I could find a weapon. I could probably also call or email someone about where we were and what I was going on.

Thankfully, Ms. Natla hadn't returned to her tent. Once I'd slipped inside I rushed over to her desk. I hastily searched all the drawers, finding nothing but print-outs of itineraries, reconciliations and other useless rubbish. Her suitcase contained clothes and toiletries. While I was standing up, frustrated, I spied some flashing lights in the corner of the tent near her bed. When I went to explore them, I found a modem and a signal amplifier. Her briefcase was beside them.

It was locked, but I managed to brace it against the metal bed and snap off the catches. Inside was her iPad, a laptop and at least four mobile phones.

I checked all the mobiles: none of the ordinary phones had any signal, and the satellite phone was locked. I tried a few times to unlock it, but only ended up completely locking myself out of it. Similarly, the laptop was password protected on resume. I tried all variations of the words 'Scion' and 'Atlantis' I could think of, but couldn't get in. If only Alex were here, I thought, and then felt a pang of regret.

Sam, I thought. I need to be faster than this.

The iPad was much the same: it wanted me to enter a four digit PIN code. I searched around her table again for anything that might have important numbers on it, but came to nothing. While I was pacing, trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do next, I happened to look down at my wrist.

The coordinates of Qualopec's tomb were still there where I'd penned them, just half-washed off from the water.

It couldn't be, could it? I entered the first four of them into the iPad.

The landing screen appeared, and the iPad automatically connected to the WiFi from the modem. I listened for a moment for anything outside the tent, and then opened Safari. Typing in my email, I waited for the login screen to appear. After what seemed like fucking eternity, the browser returned a timeout error. I nearly smashed the iPad over the foot of the bed with how frustrating that was.

I double-checked the signal amplifier was on and after I'd done that I tried to open my email again, and again. Still nothing; the amplifier obviously wasn't strong enough, or was on the wrong setting, or something. God, I really could have used Alex right now.

While I was trying to figure out what to do, I noticed another app was running. I tapped on it, and a video recording app popped up. From the look of the thumbnails, she had been using it to record FaceTime sessions . There were a series of newly recorded videos. Most of them were of Larson, but there were a couple of ones with Professor Chamberlain and one of me from when she's called me in Sam's Dad's house. At the top, though, was the face of that angry Frenchman.

"Pierre Du Pont," I whispered, and turned the volume right down before I clicked on it. He and Ms. Natla were clearly not on great terms, so perhaps I'd find something useful in one of their last conversations.

"What in fuck's name do you want, woman?" he was saying, including long strings of French insults which I only partially understood. "Stop fucking calling me."

Ms. Natla's voice was on the recording, too. "Be reasonable, Pierre. She's certainly small enough to fit in all the places you can't, but I'm not sure she can do it by herself."

"Then you shouldn't have fucking hired her behind my back, should you?" he was yelling so much at his phone that the sound was partially distorted. "You have no respect for me, after everything I've done for you!" The camera jumped in and all I could see was his nose. I realised his intention was to yell directly into the microphone. "I'm – not – doing – it!"

Ms. Natla's voice was deathly calm. "Do you love your wife?"

How tightly I gripped the iPad could have cracked the bloody screen. Pierre's angry scowl dropped into disbelief. "You wouldn't."

Ms. Natla made a noncommittal noise. "I'd prefer not to."

He swallowed. "You have no soul, Natla. I hope you burn in hell."

"Well, you knew that about me when you signed on the dotted line." She paused. "So, either you show up at the base of Vilcabamba like everyone else and do what I pay you for, or Aurelie is going to find something in her mail which might make her doubt your fidelity."

At least she wasn't planning on killing Pierre's wife. Then again, I supposed Aurelie was more useful to Ms. Natla alive than dead, because then she could be used more than once to the same end.

Poor Sam, I thought. I couldn't let her just become a pawn in all of this.

Pierre looked like he could have shot her through the phone. He was bristling with anger like a cornered wild animal. "Two can play at this game, Natla. I will make sure you never complete the Scion."

"Don't be ridiculous, Pierre. You know I always end up getting what I need one way or another." She was using her business voice. "See you at base camp."

"You won't see me. I don't care what I have to do, but I'll think of something. You will not get that fucking fragment, and I'm sending my wife on a lovely long holiday somewhere where your goons can't find her."

The call ended there.

I sat back on the edge of Ms. Natla's bed, trying to digest what I'd just seen.

At least I finally had confirmation I'd been right all along: Jacqueline Natla was dangerous. God, why hadn't I paid attention to my gut feeling before getting myself and Sam involved in this? I should never have texted Larson in the beginning, I could have completely avoided becoming involved in this.

I recalled Ms. Natla's voice saying that she always go what she wanted. It occurred to me that if she was so easily going to use Pierre's wife to blackmail him into helping her, it may eventually have come to her using Sam to do the same to me if I hadn't signed the contract in the first place.

Ms. Natla was obviously a psychopath, but all of this seemed a bit excessive for just some relic. I recalled The Scion humming as she touched it, and wondered what on earth it could possibly do that was worth all this manipulation and blackmail. It must be some really powerful magic.

Well, it seemed 'adventure' had once again found me.

I tried the Internet a few more times, but nothing. I didn't have time for this, I'd have to find another way. I was going to take this iPad with me, too. I disabled the GPS on it and peeked out of the tent.

My main concern was to find a way to get Sam and I out of here and somewhere safe. I was looking around the clearing for anything that might assist me, when my eyes rested on a black shape at the far end of the camp.

The helicopter.

How could I create a distraction big enough to allow me to get Sam and I into it, though? Furthermore, could I even fly it? I'd watch Larson handling it with relative ease, so maybe it was fairly straight-forward and I could figure it out. That didn't seem very likely, though, because it had taken me a few weeks to get the hang of driving a car and those just travelled on the ground.

On the other hand, there was less traffic in the sky, and I could probably have figured out how to drive a car in an emergency if I'd needed to. Well, I didn't have much choice. I'd just have to try and fly low enough to the ground so that if we crashed, I didn't hurt her. I was sure it was less dangerous that hanging around any longer with a woman who freely used people's families as blackmail fodder.

If I could get everyone down here, I could go up there, I thought as I looked at the machine. I settled on an old, tired method, figuring that it was old and tired because it worked like a charm: fire. Burning her belongings was just an additional benefit.

The kerosene lamp that was drying the notebook was still on. I walked over to it and pulled the shade off, spilling the kerosene in it all over the reconciliations and print-outs and other documents on the table. Then, I held the lit wick against them.

The result was instantaneous, the flame spread all across the table. After tossing some other flammable items quickly on top of the pile, I untied the window in the wet area and stepped out of it into the ferns behind the tent.

I snuck around the edge of the camp back to as close as I could get to the main tents without walking into the clearing. I crouched there, tucking the iPad in the back of my belt and waiting.

It didn't take long before someone smelt smoke, and Natla's tent was far enough down the hill that it wasn't visible from the main area. At the shouts of fire, people walked out of their tents, talking amongst each other and pointing to the plume of smoke rising into the sky from down the hill. The security guards were already running toward it, and the project workers wandering after them with great interest.

In the confusion, I slipped out of the bushes and into our tent.

Sam was turning in the bed, groaning and rubbing her eyes as I flipped open my suitcase and grabbed my travel wallet. Sam's, I had to rummage through her bag for. "Lara," she slurred. "What..?" I was so happy she was coming to, but I didn't have time to appreciate it.

I tucked them in my belt with the iPad as I stood. "We have to leave, Sam, come on." I slipped my arm under her shoulder blades and knees, and went to lift her up.

She struggled a little, still extremely lethargic. "S'okay," she said. "I can probably walk."

She couldn't, it turned out, but I was able to sling her arm over my shoulder and half-carry her out into the emptying clearing. The security guards were already at the fire and none of the project workers cared at all about us when there was a fire just outside the camp. Ms. Natla was absolutely nowhere to be seen.

I made it all the way up to the helicopter and had hoisted Sam into it and fastened her hardness before heard footsteps and a voice behind me.

"Where do you think you're going?" There was no gun against my neck this time.

I turned slowly. Larson gestured downhill at the fire. "That's a nice touch," he said. "But aren't you forgetting something?"

"If you try to stop me leaving, I'll kill you," I said, my tone steady. "After what you and Ms. Natla did to Sam, I'm sort of looking forward to it."

He looked confused for a moment, but didn't comment on it. "Isn't the purpose of stealing something to actually steal it?" he asked, crossing his arms and grinning at me.

I thought it was referring to the iPad I had tucked in the back of my belt. "Well, you took ours, so I figured it was only fair."

We both just stared at each other for a moment. He held up his hands. "Wait a second, what on earth are you doing running away from here without the Scion fragment? It doesn't make any sense. You can't just leave it with her, which I think you've just figured out."

It was my turn to be very confused. "I'm getting the hell out of here with my drugged best friend before you bastards do anything else to her in the name of holding me captive!" I glanced back at Sam; she was trying desperately to stay awake to listen to us, but wasn't managing very well.

"We didn't do nothing to her, Lara."

I wanted to punch him for lying to me. "Just shut it. I heard Ms. Natla threatening Pierre's wife so you can stop pretending to be so bloody innocent, it's clear what you've done." He had nothing to say in Natla's defence on that note , so I continued. "I'm getting as far away from here with Sam as I can. And then we're going somewhere safe while the lot of you all fight it out and hopefully kill each other."

Larson regarded me at length. "'Somewhere safe' doesn't exist with Ms. Natla," he said. All trace of his usual wry humour was gone. "So while she's alive you can give up the idea that you'll be able to get away from her if she wants to use you for something."

"Well, she's only one person. I'm going to give it a damn good try."

He nodded. "I sure did, and look where it got me." He didn't elaborate, but he did look haunted for a moment. Then, he sighed. "You should have run away with that damn fragment in the lost valley."

I could hear something explode downhill, and chorus of gasps. I wondered if it was the signal amplifier. Larson moved around to the cockpit. "Get in," he told me, nodding his head toward the inside of it. "She's probably already looking for you."

Surprised by this sudden change, I followed his instructions and slipped through into the cockpit because there didn't seem to be any alternative. He pointed to all the controls and explained how they worked, and then pressed a button labelled Engine Start. "I hope you're well acquainted with the Almighty," he said, flicking a couple of other switches before he stepped back as the engine powered up. "Because you'll pretty much need his blessing to not crash and kill the both of you."

He moved away from the helicopter. I stared at him. A few hours ago he'd been holding a gun to my neck. I suddenly saw everything in a new light: the unloaded gun, the banter and the fact he'd never laid a single finger on me, even when he had reason to. "What are you doing?"

"Isn't it obvious? I'm helping a couple of real pretty girls."

I didn't fall for his false bravado, but I didn't exactly trust him, either. "Why?"

He reminded me so much of Roth as he spoke again. "I'm dead anyway. At least this way I'm buying a lottery ticket for the good guys." He put a hand behind him and lifted the shotgun out of his holster, cocking it and aiming it at my face. "Don't let her get the other fragments," he told me. "Or we're all dead, including your cute girlfriend."

I gaped at him, and wouldn't have moved at all if he hadn't fired two shots very wide of my face. They weren't meant to hit me, but they were very loud and one of them shattered a panel of the windscreen. He took a deep breath and yelled at the top of his voice, "Hey! Get out of there!"

I knew what he meant me to do.

Here goes nothing, I thought, and lifted the collective stick while he pretended to take ages to reload his shotgun.

As I pulled the lever, the helicopter rose into the air, turning slightly towards the camp. Below me, I could see the project workers all turning around at the sound of gun fire, and then all pointing at me in the helicopter. Someone else fired a few shots, but it was from so far away none of them connected.

I looked down at the controls and my feet on the pedals. Even in the light breeze it was veering toward the mountainside, so I corrected that movement, and then needed to correct the correction as it overcompensated. I heard Larson fire some more rounds beneath me, and pushed the cyclic very gently away from me. The helicopter pitched forward through the valley between the mountains and away from the base camp.

It was easier when it was moving, I found. I tried to slow it down because I thought that might be safer, but when it went too slowly the whole machine began to turn sideways. After a few terrifying minutes of very nearly colliding with either the treetops or the mountainside as I flew, I began to get the hang of steering it. This is going to work, I realised. I smiled, despite myself. I'd done it again.

I was focusing so much on not killing us I didn't notice that Sam was managing to wake up in the cabin until she appeared at the divider beside me, leaning heavily on it.

"Go put your belt back on," I told her gently, still looking forward. "With any luck that will stop you from getting killed if I mess this up."

"You never told me you could fly a helicopter," she said, sounding quite tired, but no longer slurring her speech. "Did Roth teach you?"

I thought of Larson and the mess I'd just left. "No. I actually don't know how to fly one." I glanced at her. "Which is why you need to put your belt back on!"

She did as she was told. I headed away from the mountains towards flatter land, thinking that I wanted to maximise my chances of being able to land the thing without crashing it. Also, I figured there were more likely to be towns out of the mountains. I was too afraid to fly high enough to see very far into the distance, though, so it was difficult for me to figure out where the roads were so I could follow them. While I was squinting at the gaps in the trees below, Sam pressed the intercom.

"Something happened back there, didn't it?"

That was an understatement. God, I was so angry with that Natla woman. I'd just been so blind and stupid about her. To think I'd been about to sleep with her… I should have know I was being played. I managed to get the helmet onto my head without crashing the whole thing. The mic hung in front of my mouth, and it operated like a normal Bluetooth. "Yes, it did. We were right about Jacqueline Natla." I exhaled. "I have so much to tell you once we're on the ground."

"I don't remember…" She released the intercom for a moment, and then pressed it again. "I was sharing my lunch with this guy, and we were talking…" I could hear her sigh. "You rescued me again, didn't you?"

"Yeah." And thank goodness I did, I thought, and now I was going to hide her better than even Pierre was going to hide his wife. If Ms. Natla had business with me she was going to keep it with me and not involve anyone else. At least I didn't have any family left to worry about. It occurred to me suddenly that Larson hadn't mentioned his family at all.

She was quiet for some time again before she said, "Is it always going to be like this?"

I spotted a wide highway and pulled over it. "Like what?"

"You just showing up and saving me. When do I get to be the hero?"

I thought about Yamatai, and escaping the base camp. It wasn't as if I wished it had never happened, but I couldn't imagine anyone actually wanting to go through what I had. I just wanted Sam to be safe somewhere. "Hopefully you'll never to be."


	21. Chapter 21

* * *

Landing the helicopter hadn't been the traumatic experience I'd expected it to be. Not having mastered hovering in place, I flew backwards and forwards along a particular stretch of coastal highway waiting for it to be completely deserted. Once it finally was, I landed as closely behind a derelict hay barn as I had the courage to, shielding the helicopter from being seen from the road.

It wasn't a particularly smooth landing, but neither of us broke anything and the helicopter stayed upright, so I counted it as a roaring success.

I swung out of the cockpit into the cabin. Sam was already stretching as she stood up, covering a yawn. "Are you okay?" I asked her, wondering if she was still unsteady.

She dropped her arms down by her side. "Yeah," she said, smiling. "Thanks to someone."

I looked around us at the helicopter. "I can't believe I just did that."

"I can." She was smiling gently at me.

It was such a lovely compliment that I had to hug her for it.

"What now?" she mumbled into my shoulder. "Please say we can just sleep here."

"Afraid not," I said, "I managed to destroy the communication equipment in the camp, but eventually someone's going to make it out of the mountains and report us for arson and theft."

She pulled away. "So what do we do?"

"Get the next plane to Europe," I told her. "We can move around there without having our papers checked."

"Right," Sam said. "So we're hiding from them."

That rubbed me the wrong way, especially after Larson's parting request that I find the other Scion fragments save the world, or whatever dramatic statement he'd made. "I'm keeping you safe," I said. "You want another Yamatai?"

She gave me a look. "Of course not, but you should hear how you sound," she said. "I still don't know what even happened."

I handed her travel wallet to her as we left the helicopter and approached the road. While we were trying to wave down vehicles, I told her everything from the moment I'd stepped in the helicopter with Larson and Ms. Natla to when Larson had seen us off.

She was quiet, standing holding her elbows while I waved my arms to truck. It didn't slow down, whizzing straight past us. "Come on!" I yelled after it, and then groaned. I turned back to her.

"So your grand plan is to hide me somewhere?"

I hadn't expected her to react like that. "Yes," I said. "That's pretty much the shape of it."

"And then, what, you'll jump just straight back into this mess once you've locked me up somewhere safe?"

I didn't say anything to that, because that had been exactly what I was intending to do. I kept thinking about the humming Scion and how afraid Larson was that Ms. Natla was going to use it for something terrible.

She shook her head in a tight little movement. "No, Lara," she said, and she sounded rather irritated.

A car drove by us and neither of us tried to flag it down.

"What do you mean, 'no'?"

"I mean, no!" She crossed her arms again. "Look, I really appreciate you wanting to protect me, especially on Yamatai. You saved my soul! But it can't go on, can it? I'm part of this now. I don't want to be put 'somewhere safe' again while you risk your fucking life."

"I don't want to always have to worry that you're—"

"Then don't, Lara! Show me how to use a gun properly or something!"

I was yelling at her. "If you're holding a gun, people will _shoot at you_ , Sam! Remember Yam—"

"Yeah, and I'll shoot back!" She was so frustrated that there were tears in her eyes. "You did it, Lara. Why don't you think I can do it, too?"

We were both breathing heavily, squaring off on the side of the road. "Sam," I said more quietly. "Don't take this the wrong way, but your judgment isn't exactly stellar when it comes to people. First Mathias, then the guy that slipped you whatever he slipped you that put you to sleep…"

She scoffed. "And I suppose when you invited Jacqueline Natla to 'slip you' something, you were exercising your oh-so-superior judgment?" She had me there. I fell silent as she continued. "If you're going somewhere, I'm coming, too." She stood straighter. "I can't fight or anything, but, whatever, I'll learn."

I realised it was probably pointless to argue with her: Sam had made up her mind and there wasn't anything in the world I could do to make her change it. If anything happened to her, I knew was going to replay this moment in my mind over and over and wonder if I should have stood my ground.

"Okay," I said simply, hoping I wouldn't regret it.

She hadn't been expecting me to say that, and all the frustration just vanished from her face. "Really?"

I nodded. "Just…" I wasn't really sure how to say it. "Just be careful."

She snorted. "Look who's talking." Turning out towards the road again, she tilted on one leg to see if there were any cars coming. She was probably still drowsy, which is why she stumbled a little. I made a point of not putting a hand out to her, but it was really hard. "So what now, then? Where are those Scion things hidden?"

I shook my head to indicate I didn't know, untucking the iPad from the back of my belt. "I'm sort of hoping there will be some more information on here." I looked down at it. "Sam, do we really want to do this?"

"Do we have a choice?"

I thought about Ms. Natla's words to Pierre. "I have a feeling we don't." I smiled wryly at her. "I wonder if Pierre's thinking of teaching his wife combat skills."

She giggled, waving at another car. It didn't stop. "Probably not. Apparently she's a pacifist or something. Bit of a strange couple."

I was smiling, when something occurred to me. "Sam," I said. "How do you know Pierre?"

She looked confused by my interest. "One of the guys I was having lunch with today is good friends with him. There were two of them, though, and I don't think he was the one that actually put whatever into my drink."

I disagreed, hearing Pierre's voice swearing to Natla that he'd stop her from completely the Scion. Everything fit into place. It didn't make any sense for Ms. Natla to have drugged Sam, but it certainly made sense for Pierre to have arranged it to frame her. As a man who loved his wife, I'm sure he knew that nothing was more guaranteed to stop me from working with Ms. Natla than an attempt against Sam. I didn't feel too sorry for Ms. Natla about being framed, though: I didn't doubt that if it suited her, she would have done it, too. For getting Sam and I involved in this mess it was absolutely worth setting fire to her tent.

This whole situation was like being tossed into a pit of vipers. I just wanted to bundle them all up and launch a grenade in.

What I did find interesting, though, was that Pierre thought I had a good chance of getting the Scion fragments. That did give me some hope that I wasn't just trundling us both off like lambs to the slaughter.

I told Sam what I'd just figured out, and she sighed. "It's probably karma. I was flirting with that guy like crazy." That bothered me a lot more than it should bother a best friend. Sam noticed. "But, hey, at least I wasn't stripping for him." Thinking about that, she raised her eyebrows. "You know, I'm realising I know nothing about your sex life. First girls, now it turns out you're kind of shy normally but you're prepared to strip-tease your _female_ boss."

"Oh, good," I said dryly. "I was worried we weren't going to keep reminding me of it."

She ignored me. "So, how did it happen, anyway? Did you just…" She mimed opening a trench coat. "Or was, like—"

I laughed at the discussion we were having in the middle of all the real danger we were actually in. "I don't know, Sam, are you asking for a demonstration?"

"Totally, I have some small notes in here." She patted the pocket that had her travel wallet in it.

Just messing about, I winked at her and pretended to begin undoing my belt. She looked so stunned that I stopped immediately. Gathering herself, she turned the humour back on. "No! Don't stop!"

I looked out toward the highway, and the other way toward the farm where we'd left the helicopter. "Can you imagine? I break the contract with your father, escape from Jacqueline Natla with you in one piece, _after_ you've been drugged by her enemy, we're about to go do God knows what with this powerful magic relic… and what actually finishes up being the end of the story is that I get arrested by the Peruvian authorities for public indecency."

She laughed, waving her arms at another car that was approaching. "Maybe you _should_ get them out," she told me. "Then perhaps we'd have a chance of one of these cars stopping for us!"

Just as she said that, the car she had waved at braked. She turned to look and me with a big smile on her face, and then trotted off towards the car to greet them. I walked after her with an equally big smile on my own face.

In the middle of everything that had happened and was happening around us, Sam was reaching through the window of some stranger's car and… patting a chicken.

God, I loved that woman with all of my heart.


	22. Chapter 22

Luckily, the family who offered us a ride were actually on their way to visit relatives in Lima and were happy to take us the whole way. They didn't speak any English, but the husband had worked in Brazil and spoke some Portuguese. Sam's Portuguese wasn't that flash anymore, but they were still able to communicate well enough to be friendly.

While she was chatting away, I looked about us in the back of the car. The couple had two children, a daughter who was eight and a son who was nearly two. The boy was sitting on her lap sleeping, and the girl was pretending to be polite and involved in the conversation, but I could see an ear bud in her ear and I suspected it might be connected to an mp3 player.

Sam and I were squished together on the other side of back seat, and between the children and us was a crate with three chickens in it. According to Sam, the husband had told her they were a present for a cousin who'd just bought a house on the outskirts of Lima.

Just like the daughter, I did try to listen attentively to the conversation despite my total lack of Portuguese, but I was just so exhausted I drifted off.

I dreamt I was on Yamatai again, standing on the beach and staring into a cave where the sand met the cliff face. The wind was so wild that the rain was horizontal and the sky was alive with flashes lightening. I walked forward across the beach, finding it so incredibly hard to take each step as the wet sand was sucking at my boots. The grit blown up by the wind was grazing my face and I had to shield it face with my hands.

Eventually, I made it to the cave. It wasn't from the island at all, but Qualopec's tomb. In the centre of the room on the pedestal was the Scion fragment, just as when I had taken it. Qualopec and his mummies weren't there, though. The room was empty and the Scion was rotating slowly in the air.

I walked up to the Scion fragment and clasped it in my hand.

Suddenly, the ground collapsed underneath me, just like the other awful dreams I normally had. The stone just dissolved and I was falling, but not through Yamatai. I was falling through nothing, and the only feature I could see aside from the blinding light was that all around me the Scion was spinning like an enormous circular disc.

My feet connected with the ground. I was standing in the direct sunlight on the top of a temple behind three other people. I didn't recognise the landscape, but it looked volcanic like Iceland. Around the whole panorama I could see the Scion spinning, as if it were five-thousand foot DVD and this is the scene it was playing.

The three people had their backs to me, wearing ceremonial robes from another time. One of them was Qualopec: it was impossible to mistake those enormous insect-like false legs. He must have been hurt at some point, because I could see the outline of his real legs under his cloak.

The other two figures were a man and a woman. They were wearing headdresses and long capes and I couldn't see any of their features against the bright sunlight.

The setup was so cinematic, as if I was having a movie projected all around me.

"That is out of the question," Qualopec was saying. He wasn't speaking English, but for some reason I understood him anyway. "The sacred Heart of Atlantis is not to be used for such atrocities."

The man echoed Qualopec's sentiments. "I agree times are desperate, but we should not seek to use the Heart in such a manner. Let us just stay strong and pray for the wars to end."

The woman said nothing, but passed something back to the other man. I saw it between them as he accepted it: it was the completed Scion.

As soon as the Scion touched his hand everything became distorted. Qualopec turned around and looked directly at me, but under his robes it wasn't the living version of him I'd just watched, but the mummified body with the gold mask. The eyes of the mask weren't empty. I smothered a gasp, but I couldn't step back because I was already standing at the edge of the roof. "Lara Croft," he said, but the lips on his gold mask didn't move. "Time is running out."

I startled awake.

It was night, and I was still in the car. It was a different situation to the one I'd fallen asleep in: the only talking was the very faint radio the husband had left on while he was driving. Everyone else was asleep, even the chickens. The headlights lit a stretch of endless road ahead.

Sam had fallen asleep on my shoulder with her hands curled under her chin.

It was the perfect setting to relax and go back to sleep, but I had acquired a horrible sense of urgency from my dream and no matter how I tried to relax I couldn't get rid of it. It was the type of feeling that made me want to just run and keep running, toward or away from what I couldn't tell. I just felt like I should be moving a lot faster than I was, which was ridiculous because I could see the speedometer on the car and we were doing more than a hundred kilometres per hour.

Completely failing at going back to sleep, I decided that right then was a great opportunity to review the contents of the iPad. I didn't want to wake everyone up with the sound, though.

I looked over at the girl. She was fast asleep. Feeling a little bad, I slowly reached over and very carefully pulled on her headphones. She groaned a little as the ear bud popped out, but otherwise didn't wake up.

I plugged the cord into the headphone jack on iPad and held the bud on the outside of my ear with my fingertips. In the process of moving around, I'd woken Sam up and she had her eyes half-open, watching me tab through the apps. Without speaking, she took the other ear bud and held it beside her own ear. I smiled at her.

We went through all the videos. The ones with Larson were mostly from the last few weeks; he was updating her on his progress with getting me to agree to sign. Larson was of the opinion that I would agree eventually, but Ms. Natla was more impatient. "Pay them a visit," she told him. "Tell her we can smuggle her out of the country and get her away from the media. She'll like that."

The last video was obviously on the night that we'd been at the club, because Larson was in a doorway on the shopping strip outside it. "They were pretty cosy," he was telling her. "Wasn't much air between them. Guess you were wrong about the media making it all up."

Ms. Natla was silent for a moment, thinking. "Now that's a very interesting detail. I think I know exactly what assets I can use keep her on board." I glared at the screen – she _was_ manipulating me. "Tell her we'll take the other girl, too. Although, once we've met in person I doubt they'll be spending much quality time together."

Sam and I shared a look. I'd been totally played from beginning to end. I hoped I'd get a chance to confront this woman, I really did.

I closed that video. The next were of Professor Chamberlain. Sam and I listened to a good twenty minutes of him recounting research just in case it contained any important details, but in the end it was only about Vilcabamba, anyway.

I closed the app, pressing my lips together. After a moment of considering my options, I opened her email. We must have reached an area that had data reception, because there were several new messages. That they hadn't been read was reassuring because I meant I had destroyed all the communication equipment in the fire.

Most of them were business emails. I hadn't doubted that she actually did run a corporation, but it was one thing to know it and another to see a whole string of boring information related to it.

Sam stopped me as I went to close one of the emails. "Oh, my God," she murmured. I leant down to her and she whispered in my ear. "That company there," she pointed to the 'from' header on the email we were reading, "that's the one my dad was trying to buy. The one that tanked our stock."

I sat back up, exhaling through pursed lips. We looked at each other. This was… wow, deep water. She _did_ have the power to rock the global economy, after all.

I leaned back down to her. "She's probably pretty angry at me for setting fire to her tent and stealing her helicopter," I said. "But I'm about to seal the deal on making a very powerful enemy."

I hit the 'forward' button on the email that Sam had pointed to, and said to her, "Type your dad's email address."

She did, and then I typed, 'From Lara and Sam – She's really angry with us!', and hit 'send'.

We just sat silently for a few moments, staring at her inbox. "What did we just do?" Sam asked, sounding stricken.

"We just gave her a motive for falsely accusing us of arson and theft," I whispered. "And I think your dad is going to forgive us for skipping on the contract."

The look she gave me was one of amazement. Glancing at the husband to make sure he wasn't looking, she pressed her lips firmly into my cheek. "You're fucking incredible," she whispered in my ear.

I blushed and hugged her.

Some of the already read emails had itineraries in them – I'd actually seen these printed out in Ms. Natla's tent. After Peru, the next place the project workers were off to was Greece. I found a photo of an old church in the hills and some notes about some caverns underneath it, but nothing about the exact location of the church or the name of it. That email, I forwarded to myself.

There was a theme to most of the other emails. The Natla Technologies accountants were asking when Ms. Natla was going to sign off on the quarterly reports, because they were due to be lodged with various tax offices by the end of the week. She hadn't RSVPed to a conference next month that apparently she was due to speak at. Additionally, accounts payable had forwarded her a late notice for the rent on one of the buildings the corporation operated from in New York. As polite as the email was it suggested she login to her internet banking and authorize the transfer immediately. The final email was from one of the senior managers, a woman, asking her if she was alright because she'd been rather distracted recently.

It painted a picture of someone who wasn't expecting to need to do any of these things in the near future. I had a horrible feeling of foreboding about it. She was a CEO of an enormous corporation, rich beyond even my imagination, and she was disregarding all of that because she was expecting something better.

I thought about Larson's parting words about us all dying if Ms. Natla completed the Scion.

Whatever it was, everyone was right. We couldn't let it happen.

"Looks like we're going to Greece," I whispered to Sam.


	23. Chapter 23

At the airport, we had to wait nearly two hours for the next plane to Athens. If I hadn't been jumpy enough that at any moment we might be arrested, Sam withdrew a huge wad of Euros from one of the international cash points in full view of absolutely everyone at passport control. It meant I now needed to worry about everyone who came within a few feet of us making an attempt at her wallet, too. Especially when she kept shoving her credit card in the middle of all the notes and had to spend ages tabbing through them to find it each time she wanted to buy something.

I didn't say anything, though. Sam was serious about standing on her own two feet, and worrying about being pick-pocketed seemed like the absolute least of our problems. After I caught myself glaring at someone who was walking behind her, I decided enough was enough and went to sit in the cafeteria while she did a tour of Duty Free. I did buy myself iPhone number three and another SIM card on the way there, though.

While I was alternating between setting it up and trying to eat a slab of cardboard that was pretending to be a sandwich, Sam came rushing up to me with an armful of bags. She crouched down to put them all on the floor and before she got up, she put her fingertips on the table and rested her chin on them.

She looked sheepish. "Lara," she said. "Please don't kill me..."

"Okay..." I said slowly, narrowing my eyes at her. She rustled around in her bags and raised a box over the edge of the table. It was another bloody video camera. I closed my eyes for a moment, and then nodded. "Okay, but it's going to be difficult."

She winced. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but, you know..." She was already tearing the box open as she sat across from me. "I just keep thinking it would be awesome to have a record of this stuff, even if we don't do anything with it."

I loved her optimism about coming out the other side of the Scion saga with to desire to actually re-experience it on film, that was _if_ we managed to pull it off at all and didn't end up buried in a shallow grave somewhere.

While she had the camera charging in a nearby socket, she laid out the several outfits she'd brought for us. It wasn't as if she'd bought us matching everything, but I couldn't help noticing we were going to be subtly colour-coordinated. At least she'd picked grey and blue, I thought, packing up all my new clothes into a separate bag. She'd also brought me _fourteen_ pairs of knickers. I didn't want to ask her why she'd bought so many, because I knew she'd make another joke about my sex life. I supposed she was happy that she finally had something to joke about again, even if it was very short-lived.

While I was trying to set up my email, Sam extended her leg beside the table to display her new footwear. "Look," she said. "I bought 'sensible shoes'." She was using my terminology for them. They actually looked like they might have been quite at home in a North Face store, so I couldn't fault her choice. "I'm short now, though. Stand up!"

I followed her instruction. She stood closely in front of me, her face exactly level with mine. I felt her breath on my face for a moment, and it reminded me of being in the club. Her hips were so close I could have put my hands on them and pulled them across the inches between us.

"I'm still taller." She looked smug as she sat back down opposite me. She was looking down at her boots, but I could see she was blushing.

I hoped that meant what I thought it meant. It made me want to smile like the Cheshire cat.

When Sam got her phone working, the first thing she did was text her dad her new number. He called her about three seconds later, before she'd even put her phone back on the table. She gave me a surprised look as she checked the screen for who was calling. "Dad's calling me when I asked him to: the world really is about to end." She put the phone to her ear.

I couldn't really hear what he was saying, but he was asking her a lot of questions. Her answers were enough to determine the conversation by. "No, we had to get away, someone put Rohypnol or something in my drink, and—" She smacked her forehead. "No, Dad, no one did anything to me." She was listening to him talking, and then she gestured for me to get the iPad out. "I don't know, maybe there are." She held the phone against her shoulder. "Can you forward all the emails from that company to Dad?"

I obediently did exactly that.

After the call ended, Sam looked at her phone for a few more minutes, deep in thought. "I think he actually thinks we went to Peru for the sole purpose of investigating Natla Tech for him."

Before I could reply, our flight was called and we hurriedly collected our bags and went to board.

While we were standing in line, there was some commotion from another gate. Everyone in line turned to see what was happening. It was some distance away, but there were at least three men walking along the lines, looking closely at everyone's faces. One of the women hadn't taken kindly to having her head forced up, and she was yelling at him. Airport security was already running over to get involved. I looked up at the screen above the gate.

_TK170 TOKYO 00:15 BOARDING_

My blood ran cold. I pulled Sam behind the men in front of us. "It's them, they're looking for us."

She peeked between the people in queue. "What do they think they're going to do to us in here? It's an airport."

While I was watching them, trying to figure out if there was some way I could convince the crew to board us faster, I saw a flash of blond over the sea of black hair. "What on earth…"

When she made it to the end of the line of people, Ms. Natla stopped, checking her watch and looking up at the board. Then, she wandered slowly over behind a pillar and leaned leisurely on it, waiting. Standing there, she couldn't be seen by anyone approaching the gate from the cafeteria. A couple of her men had been detained by airport security, but the rest fanned out through the food court, looking closely at everyone. None of them were the same guards I'd seen at the base camp.

This was... There was absolutely no way _anyone_ could have made it out of base camp so quickly without flying, and there was no communication equipment and no more helicopters.

"It's her!" Sam said, gripping me.

"It's just not possible," I whispered to her. "There was no way she could have flown out of there."

"Maybe she took her broomstick," Sam joked, but it only served to remind me of the Scion humming her hands. "Come on, they don't know we're here, let's just quickly get on the plane."

We went up to the front of the line, and Sam said confidently, "Sorry to be pushy, but can we board?" and then just handed our tickets and papers over before anyone replied. People behind us in the queue were grumbling, but no one stopped us. God, it was embarrassing, though. I hated being that sort of person, and it wasn't as though I could actually explain why we needed to do it.

Once we were on the plane and all the other passengers were seated, I looked over the tops of the seats and saw nothing but ordinary people going about making themselves comfortable and calming their children. Against the window, Sam inflated her new flight pillow and experimented with it in different positions. I couldn't believe she was so perfectly calm about the fact we'd nearly been found – even if I didn't know what they could possible do to us, I still found myself quite afraid of Ms. Natla.

When the plane was in the air and the pilot advised the cabin lights would be dimmed, I finally let myself believe that we'd really escaped. I didn't think Natla Tech had any links to aviation, and if they had some way of checking who was on which flight then they wouldn't have been searching the airport. I relaxed back into the seat rest.

Sam undid her new boots and pushed them under the seat. I saw she had bought thick explorer socks, too, and it made me chuckle.

"What's so funny?"

I shook my head dismissively. "You going to try and sleep?"

She considered my question for a few moments, and then exhaled. "I still kind of feel a bit weird, but I don't think I could yet." She pulled the remote off the in-flight entertainment unit. "We could watch something instead?"

When Sam said that, it always meant documentaries or reality TV. I really quite intensely disliked reality shows, but Sam was absolutely passionate about the genre. I didn't want to say no, anyway, because watching her get excited about that stuff was entertaining in itself. She would routinely pause it and point to parts of the screen and say things like, "They should have positioned the camera differently to cut this out", "This is terrible editing" or, "Wow, did you see that? You can never get people to do that on film normally."

I was watching her at least as much as I was watching the screen. At one point, she caught me looking at her. "Sorry, Sweetie, am I being boring again?" I shook my head; she was never boring.

We mostly slept after that. There were two changeovers but eventually we did actually arrive in Athens.

It wasn't the first time we'd been there, but the atmosphere was quite different to when we'd done our drinking tour of Europe two or three years ago. There was graffiti absolutely everywhere and debris from protests all over the main streets.

"Let's stay in the same place we did last time," Sam suggested. "For old times' sake."

Our hotel had changed quite a lot, as well. There was a security guard parked out the front and only one staff member at reception. There also weren't that many patrons, which did mean we got our pick of rooms, though, so we got the receptionist to check which one we'd had last time and put us in it.

"Oh, wow," Sam said as we opened the room. Everything was still exactly the same: the decor, the furniture placement, even the same fridges and glasses. It was like I'd stepped back in time to being eighteen years old again.

Sam made a beeline to the bar fridge, and emerged with six tiny bottles of various spirits.

I looked outside the windows to see which buildings were level with us, and then closed the curtains. I didn't want to take any chances of accidentally being either found or recognised.

"They don't know we're here," she said as she handed me one of the bottles. "We can just chill for now."

She was probably right, but I still had that nagging sense of urgency I'd had since the strange dream about the Scion. I was about to find out if alcohol fixed it, though, as I poured all three bottles down my throat in neat succession.

Sam looked impressed, and then copied me.

It was the middle of the night, but we'd just been sleeping on and off for nearly twenty hours on the plane so going to bed was out of the question. Sam switched on the telly and we clicked through the channels to see if they'd changed. It was a pretty dodgy hotel, so only the main international channels had any coverage. BBC news was on about some bank crisis in Cyprus, and I was about to tell Sam to change it, when I saw the news ticker scroll something about Natla Tech. The message was half-over, though, and we'd probably have to wait ages for it to repeat.

"Did you see that?" I asked Sam. She shook her head. I took the iPad out and opened a browser and did a 'last 24 hours' search for Natla Technologies, and chose the best match.

It was an article from CNN. The subject header read, " _She made me do it! International Mining and Logistics Conglomerate Natla Technologies CEO linked to junior accountant in scandal that rocked the share market."_ I read it aloud to Sam.

She looked delighted. "No way!" she said, and bounded over to read over my shoulder. "Sometimes I just love my dad so much. Keep going!"

" _Breaking news: Allegations have just been made against Natla Technologies CEO Jacqueline Natla for sexual harassment and intimidation of junior accountant Alison Lee who was involved in organizing the buyout by Nishimura Corporation last week. The failed buyout by Nishimura Corporation sent shock-waves through the share market that many indexes are only just beginning to recover from. Lee told the press this morning that Natla had first attempted to bribe her to forge the purchase documents, but when Lee refused had systematically intimidated and sexually harassed her until she was terrified to not do as Natla ordered. "I'm so ashamed that I did this," Lee said on camera, "I just can't believe it. I will never forgive myself, but most of all I will never forgive [Natla]. Natla could not be contacted for comment, but it's understood the disgraced CEO has fled to South America to escape the furor."_

I looked up from the screen, my eyebrows in my hairline. "Well, that explains what happened with Nishimura Corp. That poor girl…"

Sam took the iPad off me to read it again herself with a giant smile on her face. "This is fucking genius," she said. "I wonder how much of it is true."

But, God, when Ms. Natla saw this... "What have I done?" I put my head in my hands for a moment, pressing my temples. "I mean, I'm perfectly happy to give that woman a taste of her own medicine, but we're kidding ourselves if this isn't going to come back to haunt us."

Sam rolled her eyes. "We could spend all night worrying about it, or…" She waggled another two bottles of gin. "We could get absolutely wasted and forget all about it!"

Since I was already sort of tipsy, I figured it was a little too late to make that decision and let her hand me another drink.

It was only fifteen minutes later when Sam had the bright idea of us using that downtime to teach her self-defense. I was no black-belt by any means, but Roth had been pretty firm that everyone, especially women, should know how to defend themselves.

I had taken Sam by the wrists and told her how to circle her hands to break the grip, but she still couldn't do it. "If all else fails, you can just throw them your purse," I said. She frowned at me, so I explained, "Because it's so full of money that if they catch it they won't be able to get up!"

She did escape my grip, but only to mess up my hair. I took her by the middle and tackled her onto the bed, pinning her there with my weight. "How would you get out of this?" I asked her.

"More alcohol?" she joked, and then struggled like a turtle on its back. Her complete helplessness would have been really concerning if I wasn't so drunk that it was hilarious. I tried futilely to pull myself back to reality.

"Come on, Sam, this is serious!" I put my elbow against her neck, but not forcefully enough to hurt her. "This could actually happen! What did I tell you?"

"I'm trying, Lara! But you're really heavy, and I can't reach you to hit you!"

"If you think this is heavy, try having a huge sweaty man on you." I pushed my forearm against her chin to try to get her to fight back, but she was just lying flat on the bed, dissolving in a fit of giggles.

"Tried that!" she said when she caught her breath. "A few times, actually! Want to see how I got _them_ off?"

I didn't realise it was a pun until she dragged a hand up my thigh as if she was going to grab between my legs. Surprised, I lurched away from her and she took the opportunity to hook her explorer-sock-fluffy ankles behind my knees and sweep my legs out from underneath me. I may have been able to catch myself before I fell under normal circumstances, but I was unsteady from the alcohol and just fell flat on my back.

I lay on the floor, half-winded and laughing from the ridiculousness of it. She came and sat on top of me.

"Now," she said in a deep voice that was supposed to sound like a man, "give me all your money!"

She was straddling my hips, leaning back on my bent legs. I put my hands on either side of her thighs, wondering if this is what it looked like to men when they were shagging a woman. This is what it looked like to shag Sam, I thought, thinking that even compared to me she was tiny. Men probably liked that.

Because I could, I neatly flipped her under me.

"This is so not fair," she said, laughing as I pinned her wrists beside her head.

"Give me all _your_ money," I told her, my eyes level with hers.

She grinned. "You'll have to search me for it!"

I pulled her wrists to the top of her head and lay one over the other and leaned on them. She made some cursory struggles, but not real attempt to get away. I slipped a hand into either of her jean pockets, but didn't find anything.

"That's not 'everywhere'," she told me. "There are places you haven't searched!"

"Of course there are," I said in my man-voice. "I'm a gentleman!"

"Don't be," she said.

I was laughing. "Sam!" I returned to my normal voice. "You're supposed to be getting them _off_ you, not inviting them _onto_ you!"

"Whatever, I might die tomorrow. I might as well enjoy myself tonight." She leaned her head up to mine. "Hop on, 'Gentleman'!"

It happened so fast that by the time I was surprised enough to react, her lips were already against mine. They were so soft, just like I remembered from Berlin. I kissed her so hard I pressed her head back into the carpet. Underneath me, her body was completely relaxed as if she'd totally surrendered.

After a few seconds I pulled away from her, leaning back. We were both breathing heavily. What were we doing?

"Are you going to let go of my hands?" she asked, and I realised I still had them pinned above her head. I released them and straight away she cupped my jaw with them and brought my mouth back down against hers, not allowing me any more time to panic.

"You taste like cheap booze," she told me, laughing, and then kissed down my neck. I closed my eyes, feeling her lips drag against my skin.

I wasn't sure if it was the alcohol, being back in the same hotel we'd had so much fun in three years ago, or even the fact that neither of us really knew what was ahead of us, but there was a security about this that was comforting. Ms. Natla's appeal had been in her complete control, but this was different. This is Sam, I thought, and smiled. I slid a hand underneath her t-shirt and up her ribcage until I felt the lace of her bra. This is Sam, and I'm actually touching her.

"At the front," she said into my neck. I knew what she meant, and felt for the clasp between her breasts to undo it. Only Sam would have the forethought to buy front-fastening bras just in case she got lucky. I chuckled, because I was still a little drunk and everything was still a little funny. Her breasts had mostly disappeared because she was on her back, but I took a handful of what I could anyway, running my fingers over her nipples.

She inhaled sharply and caught my lips with hers again, bending her knee between my legs. God, that added another layer of feeling. I sat back heavily against it just as I had in the club, pressing my thigh between hers. I could have come just from that, if I'd let myself.

I'd pulled away from her lips to focus on our thighs, and when I looked back toward her she had her eyes open. We watched each other, our hips moving slowly and deliberately together. She was just so beautiful. I wanted to say things to her. I imagined bending down and whispering into those ears how I felt and what I wanted.

Sam pulled at the base of my t-shirt, motioning for me to put my hands over my head and let her pull it off, so I let her. When I reached behind my back to unfasten my own bra, though, she pushed my hand away. "I'm good at this," she said, and unclipped it with a single movement. It felt like something that would take a lot of practice to perfect, so I was suspicious.

"You've been sleeping with loads of girls," I accused her as I sat over her.

"Just a couple," she grinned, but then the grin faded. "I wasn't sure how you'd take it."

"Because I'm just so straight as an arrow." It was sarcastic, but she didn't take it as such.

"Well, yeah," she said, her fingertips running along my stomach. "You kind of always were." Her fingers reached my scar and felt along it just as she had in the hotel in Lima, and just as Ms. Natla's had. I like Sam's there much better.

They didn't stay there for long, because she reached up with both her hands and filled them with my breasts. She sighed – I loved the sound of it. "Fuck, you're hot," she said. "I keep thinking I'm getting with this hot girl, and then I lean away and it's you. And then I'm like, 'It's Lara, your best friend, you're getting with Lara'," She coaxed me down to kiss her while her hands were busy. "It's Lara, and she's got super amazing boobs."

I laughed at that, collapsing against her. We kissed deeply, pressed together the whole length of our bodies, before I rolled to the side to rescue my numb elbow.

Lying next to each other on the carpet, we threaded out fingers together. I wanted to go on, but I was terrified to. When I imagined what came next I just couldn't believe that it would be the beautiful experience I wanted it to be and not be me clumsily feeling around without the slightest idea of what I was doing. Worse, what if this wasn't the same thing for her as it was for me? Sex never meant anything to her, but every time I'd had it, it had meant something to me. Maybe the whole thing with Ms. Natla had given her the wrong idea.

"Can I ask it?" she murmured. "What is this?"

It was on the tip of my tongue, the very tip. _I love you, Sam,_ I could nearly say it. _I love you, please let me show you._ Instead, I lied. "I don't know."

My answer wasn't reassuring to her. She took a deep breath, looking distracted. It was a long time before she spoke. "I'm really scared," she said, looking at the ceiling. "This is real, this Scion thing. Natla's fucking terrifying. There's just something about her."

Was that what this was about? Was this just a new level of comfort for a new level of fear? I hoped it wasn't just that.

"If you're going to die, I hope I die first," she said, turning her head toward me. "Because I couldn't watch you die."

"God, Sam, that's really morbid. Let's neither of us die."

Her grin crept back. "Let's save the world and live happily ever after," she said. "It would really suck that you finally got famous if you don't, like, live to enjoy it."

I thought about that big swarm of journalists that smothered us the minute we got out of hospital. "I'm not really so sure I want everyone to know my name," I said. "Just…" I didn't really know to explain it. "It was really nice when those archaeologists all clapped for me and all knew who I was on the project. Ms. Natla was rather awful, but it was nice to have people respect me for actually doing something I love."

"Hang on," she told me and rolled upwards, nearly falling over again as she disappeared into her new suitcase. She emerged with the video camera and pointed it at me.

"Sam!" I hissed, grabbing my t-shirt from above my head to cover my breasts.

"Sorry, it's not on, I promise! I'm just used to holding it like this!" She came and sat cross-legged next to me. "The actual point I was trying to make before I totally screwed it up was that we can film this stuff, and if we make it out alive, we can turn it over to Dad." I didn't understand, so she continued. "When you give journos plenty of real footage, they don't have to make up stuff. If we film some of those things you were talking about, it won't be like Yamatai, where it's this island where only Search and Rescue and some boring old archaeologists go. It'll be right there, on their TV screen. You'll be Lara Croft: Archaeologist or whatever, and it'll be what you want."

What I want, I thought, looking at Sam. Whatever I wanted, I wanted Sam to be part of it. What would I possibly do without her?

I put a hand on hers. "If I'd come here by myself, I'd have spent all night lying wide awake and either remembering Yamatai or imagining mummified Qualopec creeping around on his insect legs."

She looked thrilled. "You're welcome," she said, and watched me for a few moments like she was expecting me to do something. I was too worried about what that might be to do it, so when I just lay there she reached a hand up and refastened her bra.

That's that, I thought, feeling around the floor for my own. I supposed the mood had been lost, anyway.

Assuming we actually survived what lay ahead, there would be plenty of time for figuring everything out afterwards.


	24. Chapter 24

I had actually spent a good hour on Google trying to find ruins that looked at all similar to the picture I'd found on Ms. Natla's iPad before Sam had the bright idea of just asking the receptionist. Rather than wait for a more sociable hour, she dragged me downstairs and made me hold up the iPad at the woman while she stood back and filmed everything.

The receptionist didn't even blink. "That's St Francis' Folly," she said.

Sam angled the camera back at herself. "And that, folks, is how professionals do research."

I winced. "Sorry," I told the receptionist.

She shook her head to indicate she didn't mind, and then leaned over to her computer. "You want me to book you seats on the bus to Thessaly? It will take you quite close, but you will need to walk for one or two hours."

"Thank you," I told her, locking the iPad. "What time does it leave?"

She checked. "Half past nine, they can pick you up from here." She made a noise. "Oh, it's off-season," she said as if that were a bad thing. "There will be no tours around the site. You can still go and take pictures of the rocks, though." She said the last part to Sam, who was filming her again.

I agonised over exactly how to ask the next question. "Do you know of any hunting supply stores in this area?" I didn't want to say the word 'gun', because I was fairly certain Greece had strong gun control laws like the rest of the European Union. "Or maybe adventure stores?"

She thought for a moment. "In the city? No. The bus will leave you in Kalabaka, there are lots of farms near there so maybe some shops there will sell what you need." I was glad she didn't ask why, because I wasn't sure what I would have told her.

We left most of our new possessions in the hotel, figuring that we probably wouldn't be gone more than a day or two. Sam had bought me a very comfy pullover with loads of pocket space, and there really wasn't much I needed that didn't fit into them. Of course, what I _really_ needed was a store that would sell me outdoor adventure gear and a weapon. I supposed Sam would have to get one, too.

On the bus, I spent most of my time worrying about what lay ahead of us while Sam fiddled with her new toy.

I had a growing feeling of discomfort that I couldn't place, too. I shifted in my seat a few times, trying to find a position that I could relax in. Focusing on what Sam was doing was the only effective distraction.

"The new model is so awesome," she told me, squinting at the camera's LCD screen. "Look, there's a forward light, so we have a choice if we use normal video recording or low-light recording in the dark." She pressed a button and an LED on the camera lit the seat in front of us. "I wonder how strong it is…?"

She pointed it at me and pressed it. I put my hand up to shield myself. "I hope you _don't_ point that at me in the dark," I said. "I won't be able to see anything for five minutes afterwards."

She was messing about with some of the other buttons and this incredibly bright strobe lit the bus like lightening for a fraction of a second. There were only a few other passengers, but they all turned around to see what was going on.

"Coooool!" Sam was practically salivating. "It takes _comparative light measurements_!"

I patted her. "It's going to be okay."

She mock-glared at me. "You'll thank me when you see how awesome this will make your skin look," she said. "No more washed-out ghost Lara." I was reasonably certain she was actually insulting the quality of her previous hand-held cameras and not my actual skin tone, but I still gave her a look anyway.

She grit her teeth. "I didn't mean it like that!" she said. "You know I think you're gorgeous!"

That harked back to last night, and I was thankful to her for reminding me. It was much more pleasant to sit day-dreaming about making out with Sam rather than hunching over and worrying about what I'd do if anything happened to her.

While we were passing through one of the towns, I thought I might take the iPad out and check how far away we were. Just before I opened Safari, I noticed that FaceTime had an unanswered request that hadn't been there before. I tapped it.

It was from Larson, and it had come through earlier on the bus ride. Of course, I thought, he knows I took the iPad. I looked up at the other passengers; I couldn't very well call him now.

Ms. Natla had a whole batch of new emails and I opened her inbox out of curiosity. It was in pretty much the same state mine had been when I'd come out of hospital: every journalist on the planet had tried to email her. I was scrolling through the messages, wondering if I dare do something as bad as reply to them, when I found a message from a gmail account.

It had the subject header, " _Hello, Lara_."

I looked up from the screen for a moment, taking a breath. Then, I shook Sam. "Look!"

She looked over, the smile disappearing from her face as she read the screen.

I selected the message. It simply read, " _We have a lot to talk about, don't we? I want you to go to the launching screen and look for a small icon with three circles in it. You won't even need to select it. – N._ "

Feeling a growing sense of dread, I did as her email had instructed and found myself staring at an icon that called itself 'LogMeIn'. I didn't recognise it, but Sam did. "Isn't that the program Alex used to use to control his computer at home from the Endurance?"

I felt the colour drain from my face. What was the worst possible thing Ms. Natla could have done remotely to her iPad? I already knew the answer as I selected the settings.

The GPS tracking had been enabled.

Without waiting another second, I turned the iPad off. If I could have taken the battery out, I would have. As it was, I felt like it even if it were buried in the ground it wouldn't be off enough to make me feel comfortable.

"Get rid of it," Sam said, taking it out of my hands and going to throw it out the window.

"Wait!" I said to her, and wrestled it out of her grip. "It's still got information we need about the Scion on it!" She let me win, and I put it back into her bag. "It's off, it's okay."

"It's not okay, Lara," she whispered. "She fucking knows where we are!"

"I know, I know." I tried to think. "She can't possibly get here that quickly from South America. We'll hopefully have the next fragment and be out of here before she even arrives!"

Sam sat back against the seat and tried to take some deep breaths as she wiped her palms on her pants, the camera forgotten. She may ordinarily have been incredibly optimistic, but when she panicked, she did it properly. I forced my arms around her, hugging her to me.

"It's okay, Sam, we've got plenty of time – this only just happened since we got on the bus." I wished I were as confident as I sounded.

"What if she hires some people here to come and get us?"

I hadn't thought of that, and it sounded like something she would do as well, given the vast numbers of people she seemed to be able to dig up at the drop of a hat. "We'll get off the bus soon," I told her. I had no idea if it was true or not, but it seemed like a comforting thing to say.

It was actually a good thirty minutes before we did arrive, but the wait did allow both of us to calm down and think carefully about what could really happen. What was the likelihood she had staff or contacts working _in_ this tiny town? Very small, I suspected. There was a good chance we were far enough ahead of her to be safe. We arrived and as we alighted were able to see that there was no one waiting for us.

Kalabaka was a picturesque Greek town nestled in a rocky mountain range. Even in the centre where the bus dropped us, every single direction looked like a postcard. Sam turned the camera back on and did a full sweep of the main street, mainly following me in my quest for an adventure store.

At least luck was on our side in one regard: there was a reasonably active abseiling and rock-climbing tourism industry in the area, and there was a shop solely dedicated to resourcing those visitors. Inside, we bought gloves – Sam insisted on fingerless so she could operate her camera – headlamps, torches, ropes with ascenders and descenders, and a belt bag for us each. When I was done stuffing all my gear into my belt bag, I turned back to the clerk, not wanting to leave for St. Francis' Folly without a good fighting chance of holding our own if Ms. Natla _did_ find us. "Do you know anywhere that sells weapons?" I asked him as casually as I could manage. "You know – wolves."

"No, sorry," he said. He was looking at Sam with her camera as he said it, and there was something about his expression that suggested he wasn't being truthful. I motioned for Sam to turn her camera off, and she did. I gave him another pointed look and he grinned. "I won't say to camera," he said. He walked past us to the door, locked it, and turned around a sign that probably said the Greek equivalent of _Back In Five Minutes_.

For a moment my pulse picked up as he passed us again. I suddenly got it into my head that he might be one of Ms. Natla's men, and now that he'd locked us in here with all his weapons, he was going to tie us up and wait for her to arrive to deal with us. While I was looking around me to see what I could grab if I needed to stop myself from being tied up, my eyes rested on an ice axe hanging with the winter gear. It looked just so similar to the one I'd reconstructed on Yamatai that I was torn between feeling comforted by the familiar shape and how upset I was by the images I had associated with it.

"Lara," Sam said gently, shaking my arm.

I looked forward at what Sam had been indicating. The clerk actually hadn't gone to find equipment to tie us up with, but had just taken a couple of cases from behind the counter. One of them had most elaborate tactical knives I'd seen since Roth had shown me all of his, and the other was just full of Glock 17s. I looked through them; they were all the same model and they were all clearly second-hand. There was no doubting they were stolen.

Well, beggars can't be choosers, I thought. "Do you sell holsters?"

He nodded and showed me two types, one that concealed the gun on the small of the back and the other was a chest-strap that stowed it under the arm on the side of the body. They were Velcro rather than leather.

I selected two guns and two of the holsters that would hang under our arms. I really much preferred to have at least one gun at my waist or on my thighs, but since there wasn't much choice, I'd make do.

Still feeling just so horribly unsettled, I went and took an ice axe off the wall as we made our purchase. It was smaller and sturdier than the one I'd used on Yamatai, but still retained its predatory shape. I tested its weight in my hands and then put it on the counter. There was something comforting about having it near me.

The clerk looked from us to the gear we were buying. "Wolves?" he said, not believing us for a second.

We nodded. He narrowed his eyes, running Sam's card and then handing us a receipt. It listed fifteen hundred euros of 'expert climbing equipment'. Despite how anxious I was, it actually made me grin. I showed Sam and I saw a ghost of a smile on her lips.

We waited until we were well clear of the shop and on a side street before Sam made me recount the purchase on camera and furtively display each item while we constantly looked around to make sure no one was after us and no one could see what we were doing.

The holsters fit easily under Sam's jacket and my pullover, so there was no need to conceal them further. The other equipment we just left in the plastic bag until we'd bought food and were well out of town.

The receptionist had been right, it really was off-season. There was absolutely no one on the trail to St Francis' Folly and the air was cold enough to still have a bite to it. Once we were well out of the town, I began to relax a little. The valley was surrounded by smooth cliffs that were acoustic amplifiers, and we would easily hear any vehicle approaching well before it could see us. There was plenty of groundcover we could use to conceal ourselves should it come to that.

I could feel Sam relax, too. She had the camera glued to her right hand and was filming us walking. Her chattiness crept back as we put more distance between us and Kalabaka, and before I knew it we were joking around again.

It was nice to just walk with her. She'd never had much interest in going hiking with Roth and I, and as much fun as I'd always had with Roth, I liked this more. I felt guilty about making the comparison, but it was so much fun walking between the rock faces and chatting away with her. Roth and I were both people who tended toward silence, so our conversations were far fewer.

"My legs are _killing_ me," she did say at one point, though. "How much further is it?"

I had actually expected to be enthusiastic about the idea that she might back out, because it would mean that she was out of harm's way. However, I was actually a little saddened by the thought of parting with her and going our separate ways while I explored. I liked being with her. "It'll get a lot harder than this," I warned her.

She made a face. "I know," she said, filming our feet as we walked along the track. "I just want to get to the good stuff already." She was quiet for a few moments. "Do you think there'll be more dinosaurs?"

I had to laugh. "I have no idea what there will be." Only Sam could make me laugh about that, because deep in my gut I was certain that comedy was the last thing we'd find inside.

We were busy discussing which dinosaurs had been our favourite as children and Sam had been telling me the story of Terry the Pterodactyl when we reached the end of the trail.

We looked at each other and then upwards; towering far above us was a huge stone building right on the edge of a cliff. It must have been at least five hundred feet off the ground, overlooking the whole valley and the mountains around it. It was truly someone's folly to build it so far into the sky.

"Good thing we bought climbing gear," I said as Sam panned around with the camera.

"Nah, this way," Sam said, and pointed over toward the side of the rock face supporting the folly. I couldn't see anything worth noting, but followed her anyway. It turned out she'd taken me straight to a gap in the cliff that lead into an internal stairwell carved into the caverns.

"How on earth did you see that from all the way back there?" I asked her, thinking the sunlight made it look like just a divot in cliff face.

She held up her camera and quoted, "'The A35 boasts 52x Optical Zoom and a six inch crystal clear HD LCD screen'."

I hugged her. "You just saved us from spending three hours scaling a cliff-face," I told her as I pulled away. "My hands are eternally grateful."

She shot me a sideways grin. "How are they thinking of thanking me?"

She managed to get another blush out of me, but really I was just so happy she was relaxed enough to mess around. Well, two can play at that game, I thought as I put our bags on the ground to get the gear out. "How exactly would you like them to thank you?"

She gave me a measured stare, but there was a smile on her face. "I like this Lara," she said. "She's fun." After a few moments of grinning at each other, she put her own bags down and reached inside her jacket. "Okay, so how do we load this thing?"

I showed her how to cock it and hold the gun, figuring that teaching her how to eject the magazine and load it was probably unnecessary. If we did come across Ms. Natla's staff, I was probably going to be doing most if not all the shooting, so I doubted she'd need more than fourteen bullets. If I was honest with myself, I knew I'd bought the gun mainly to make her feel less dependent on me. I didn't expect her to need to fire it at all.

At least, I desperately hoped she wouldn't need to use it, because the only circumstance that would cause that is if something had happened to me.

She looked so smug about it, though, forgetting all about the iPad and Ms. Natla probably jetsetting here so she could practice pulling it out of the holster and putting it back in. While she was playing Super Heroes by herself with the gun, I tucked the axe through my belt and looped the rope around a shoulder. I was able to roll up the plastic bags and squish them in my belt bag so we didn't leave them behind on the track, too.

I noticed she'd left the camera near my feet to play with the gun, so I surreptitiously retrieved it while she had her back turned. Smiling to myself, I held it up and started recording. She was examining the grip I'd told her to use on the gun and looking over the nose of it. She dropped it by her side for a moment, and then snapped it up again quickly as she tried to get it in the same position as I'd shown her. It was absolutely the sweetest thing I'd ever seen. "And that," I said, mimicking Sam's style of narration, "Is what happens when you give a camera girl a gun."

She turned around when I spoke, and then saw the camera in my hand. I looked up over the LCD and winked at her.

"I hate you," she said affectionately, and did a little dance for the camera as she came over to take it from me.

I touched her shoulder and lead her up into the internal stairwell.

Up close, St Francis' Folly was far vaster than it had appeared from the valley. The doors themselves were two storeys high, and, as I discovered, unfortunately sealed shut.

Sam was already breathless from the several hundred stairs and sat down against the doors to recover. "This is a bad time to tell you I have blisters, right?"

I would have offered her the first aid kit, except to the right side of the entrance I saw a smothered fire and a collection of wrappers from an instant meal. Distracted, I walked over to and held my hands above the coals. Unfortunately, in the middle of the day, I couldn't tell if the coals were warm from the fire or from the sun. It was probably quite old, because there was no one around.

I'd have taken the trash with me if I could have: I hated leaving litter to spoil the scenery.

Standing, I brushed my hands off and looked up the wall. Directly above it, probably only ten or fifteen feet off the ground was a window with shutters that were half-rotted.

"Sam!" I called, "Can you come over here and give me a leg up?"

She did so, and I was able to scramble up and swing myself up onto the wide sill. One of the shutters had already fallen out, and I kicked the other out, and then reached down and helped Sam climb up herself. At least she was light.

We dropped down into the main hall. The whole building was more or less one room with a few alcoves and an open second level. Huge columns in the centre that would have once supported the roof were in various states of disrepair, with some of them completely crumbled. The roof in the middle had already collapsed and there was debris from it everywhere. Despite the terrible state of the building, there was gold leaf on almost every wall _._ I couldn't believe that over the centuries it hadn't been scratched off by anyone.

There was also something moving at the far end of the room. Sam had already spotted it and had the camera up, excited to see what it was. After a few seconds of filming it and adjusting the zoom, she looked over the edge of the camera, disbelief evident. "It's a lion!" she said, and looked hurriedly around us.

"Here!" I said, pulling her over and hoisting her up on top of the thick stump of a broken pillar. I climbed up after her. The second level was just a short jump from the pillar, but Sam was looking down at the floor. "Come on," I told her, trying to be encouraging. "It's not that far to fall if you miss."

Eventually she talked herself into it and launched herself across the gap. She did stumble on the other side, but turned around to me with a giant grin on her face. "I did it!"

I smiled and followed her without any of the same difficulty.

Up here, we were safe from that rogue lion. Sam sat on the edge of the second storey with her feet dangling as she filmed it. It was too far away in real life for me to see it very well, but it was sharp and close on Sam's screen. I sat down next to her to watch it.

It didn't look particularly agitated, but it had seen us and was watching us with the same concern as we were watching it.

"This is amazing," Sam said. "What's a _lion_ doing here? I didn't know Greece had lions."

"They don't have them – at least, not in the last couple of millennia. There's lots of stories about them in ancient Greece."

We watched it. "Like the dinosaurs," Sam breathed. "It must be something about the Scion. It's keeping them alive here, even after thousands of years." She zoomed a little more. "It doesn't have a mane, I suppose that means it's male. Aren't they the more dangerous ones?"

I heard a footstep behind us and my heart leapt into my throat. "Au contraire, my girl, it is the _female_ of the species that you need to watch out for." A big black boot planted itself in the centre of Sam's back and kicked her off the edge. She shrieked, and I heard a dull thump as her body hit the stone floor below.

" _Sam!_ " I screamed, trying to roll out the way and drop off the edge after her before I even looked at who it was. I didn't need to look, anyway. I knew that French accent.

Pierre's other foot was on the sleeve of my pullover, halting my escape.

I went to reach for my gun, but stopped when I saw he had his own aimed directly at my face. "So, Ms. Croft," he said, cocking the gun. "It seems you didn't get the hint."


	25. Chapter 25

I couldn't hear anything on the ground below, and that made me worry that Sam had been seriously injured. "Sam?" I called, looking directly up into the barrel of Pierre's gun. Past it, a goatee smirked at me. No one answered.

"You can tell Natla that she can kiss goodbye to any hope she will ever complete—"

"I'm not working for her any more, Pierre! You made sure of that yourself!" I needed to get away, I needed to go down and see if Sam was alright.

He didn't look surprised at me saying that, which suggested to me that someone may have already told him since I'd left base camp. However, he did scowl at me and jab the gun in the air towards my face. "Then what are you doing here, eh? I suppose you're just a tourist?"

"The same thing you are!" I said, desperate for him to let me get away and go down to Sam. "Trying to prevent Ms. Natla from getting the next fragment!"

"I think not," he said. "I think you want it for yourself, eh?"

I must have looked at him as if he were absolutely _mad._ "No! Pierre, she's… dangerous! We've got to stop her, you must know that!"

"We are all dangerous, Ms. Croft, with the right reason to be." He was glaring down at me. "Now, I'm stuck with a dilemma. I need to make sure you don't follow me, but I also feel it is a waste to kill such a pretty young woman while she's lying helpless at my feet." He looked me up and down with such hunger that it made my hair stand on end. He wouldn't, I thought, wasn't he supposed to be incredibly faithful to his wife? "I hear Larson had the same idea, and that didn't end so well for his face, eh?"

"Larson is _nothing_ like you," I said, regretting saying something so inflammatory even as it came out of my mouth.

He roughly shoved me with the tip of his boot. "Larson is a fucking bloodsucker," he hissed at me. "You think he's such a gentleman? Who do you think keeps that bitch cosy at night, eh? It's disgusting. It's no fucking wonder about his daughter, I'd have done the same." He kicked me again.

As I curled to try and brace myself against the impact, it occurred to me that the level of anger Pierre was harbouring was too extreme for me to have been the only problem in his relationship with Ms. Natla. What could have possibly happened to someone to fill them with such fury, and did he just say Larson had a daughter?

"Lara…?" Sam's voice sounded confused and uncertain. I'd never heard a sweeter sound.

"Sam! I'm coming!" He kicked me again.

"Now, there's an idea. Slowly take that rope off your shoulders," he ordered, and then explained his reasoning. "I'm too old-fashioned to just kill a helpless girl," he said. "But perhaps the lion down there doesn't have my sensitivities."

I did as he said, waiting every second for an opportunity to pull him off balance, or smack the gun away, or kick his feet out from under him. He was no amateur – the opportunity didn't come.

"Shall we go down and tie you to your cute little girlfriend?"

I remember what Sam had said about Aurelie being a pacifist. "Your wife would be horrified if she knew what you were doing to us," I tried. "If you really loved her, you'd—"

"If I loved her, Ms. Croft? If I really loved her? I wouldn't bring her to this place to get kicked off ledges by men and eaten by lions!" He kicked me dead in the side and I gasped for breath. "Now tie your feet together. You can tell her how much you love her and how sorry you are for bringing her here to die while you both get torn to pieces."

I looped the rope around my ankles with quivering hands, acutely aware of the gun beside my head. "You don't have to do this, Pierre. We both don't want Ms. Natla to get the Scion!" I loathed the idea of working with him after what he'd done to us, but it was a better solution than being killed. "We could help each other."

"I don't need your help to enter Tihocan's tomb, Ms. Croft," he told me, still supervising my efforts. "Qualopec may have been fond of small spaces, but Tihocan was much less paranoid. The pleasure of crushing that bitch's dreams is going to be mine, and I'm going to savour every delicious moment of it after everything she's done to me."

Tihocan?

Just then, the lion roared and the sound echoed off the walls. There was some movement below us.

It distracted Pierre for a microsecond, just enough for me to roll toward him and knock him off his feet. He fell over me, but not far enough to topple over the edge. I reached inside my pullover and drew my gun, firing at him, but he knew exactly what he was doing and weaved in and out of the broken pillars so it was impossible for me to get a clear shot.

"You're an _idiot_ , girl!" he yelled from behind one of them. I stood kicking the rope off my feet and aiming from pillar to pillar. The way the sound bounced made it impossible for me to tell where he was from the echo of his voice. "You really want to compete with me on this one?"

I didn't bother pointing out he wasn't giving me many options.

"And how am I so different from you, Pierre?" I shouted, "You just got bested by the 'pretty young girl' and you think _you're_ the one to stop her completing it?" I tried to back over to the edge of the second story so I could sight Sam without taking my gun from where I thought he was. "I've killed a Demi-God, _and_ I got the first fragment!"

"This is a personal matter for me, Ms. Croft," He ran between two columns, firing at me. "I have been dreaming of fucking that bitch since I first laid eyes on her, but I have finally figured out the most satisfying way to do it isn't Larson's way." He paused. "Or, I think, your way."

I shot a few rounds at the pillar he was behind, hoping shrapnel would brain him. How did this man at all relate to the loyal monogamist Ms. Natla had hinted that he was on the video, or how everyone spoke about his marriage?

"Make the smart choice," he warned me. "Turn around and leave, because I won't be such a gentleman if we meet again."

He made an attempt to prove his point, rounding a pillar to the left of me and taking a few shots. None of them connected and I dived out of the way. By the time I had my gun pointed at where he had been shooting from I could already see him disappearing through a doorway. I kept the gun pointed at the door for a few seconds, but he wasn't coming out of it.

Sam, I thought, and rushed over to the edge. I had been about to drop off it, but I stopped myself at the last minute.

Sam was still lying on her side, the camera some distance from her across the floor. Standing behind her and sniffing her head was the lion.

Her eyes were wide open and she was trying not to breathe or make any sound.

She made eye contact with me, terror visible on every inch of her face.

My hands shook as I held the gun up toward the lion. From the high angle I was shooting at, though, I could easily have missed and hit Sam. I had no idea how accurate this gun was since I hadn't managed to hit Pierre with it.

When the lion saw me above them, it looked up at me and made a deep hunkering noise. Before it had the chance to go back to Sam, I changed the angle of my gun and shot the floor beside it a couple of times. The noise startled the lion and it ran away from her, giving me enough time to climb down and dash over to her.

I didn't make it, though, before the lion recovered from its surprise and stopped. It turned around as if to double-check its assessment of me as a threat, and started running at full pelt toward us.

I stood my ground, raising my gun and peering over the barrell. I fired about five shots before it dropped, and then I fired another couple just to make sure it was definitely not going to get up.

Sam had curled into the fetal position with her hands over her head. When the sound of gunfire stopped, she peered between her hands. I closed the distance between us and crouched beside her, looking over her for blood through her clothes or bent limbs. I didn't find any.

She sat up slowly, shaken.

"Are you okay?" I asked her. "That was a heavy fall."

She nodded. "Yeah, I think so. I was winded, though." She took an unsteady breath. "That lion just– Lara!"

I didn't understand her surprise, and then I saw where she was looking. I had blood seeping through the shoulder of the pullover. I hadn't felt anything at all, I couldn't even figure out at which point I'd got that wound. I pushed the collar aside and found a chunk of shrapnel poking out of my skin. Without even thinking, I just pulled it between my index finger and thumb, tossing it somewhere. It didn't look like it was going to bleed much more, so I left it and slid my pullover back across.

She was staring at me like I'd grown another head. "You're like… G.I. Jane or something," she said, but sounded at least as impressed as she was dismayed.

I had a quick look over the rest of me for anything else I'd missed, and then set about checking her as I helped her up. "Maybe you should just go back to Kalamaka…" I said as I felt gently around her ribs to see if there was any tenderness. Fortunately, she felt like she was in one piece. "He was serious, Sam. He will kill us if he gets the chance."

"Then we'd better not give him the chance," she said. "Because I'm not going to go back and just sit by the road wait for Ms. Natla to arrive and do, like, whatever with me."

I brushed off her back. "But will she _shoot_ you, you think? We don't even know what she wants."

"You said you saw magic," Sam pointed out. "With the Scion. At least with a gun you know what it's going to do." She shivered. "Plus, there's just something about her. She _feels_ bad. He's just a jerk."

We stood in the centre of the room, stuck as to what to do. "It's just madness," I said at last. "I would happily have let him get his revenge if it meant destroying the Scion, but he didn't even let me offer."

"That guy clearly has his own agenda," she said. "He doesn't seem like the save-the-world type."

"That's just it, though, Sam." I frowned. "I don't actually think he _knows_ how dangerous Ms. Natla is, that there's some sort of magic about her. I think he just thinks she's this normal woman who's jilted him or something." I exhaled. "I don't think he thinks it's a world-saving matter at all."

"Maybe if we told him?"

"Told him what, though? 'Oi, Pierre, the world is in danger, how about you just give me the Scion'?" I shook my head as I fixed my pendant. "I don't even know how to explain it myself. But I do know that if he gets the Scion and takes it to her to execute his grand plan… well, if he's not expecting magic, she'll get it from him somehow."

We stood there for another few moments. Sam spoke first. "Well, we can't just stay here," she said. "I can already tell you want to be all heroic and I'm not going anywhere without you. And," she interrupted me, anticipating I was going to speak because I had been, "it's not like you could just try and hide me away somewhere now, anyway. Not after what dad's doing to her on the news."

"So we follow him?"

She nodded. "Yeah."

"Okay," I said, feeling both pleased about possibly getting to shoot him and terrified that he might shoot either of us. Sam was limping a little. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"I'm fine," she said too quickly. She tried to dismiss my concern, though, moving over and picking up the video camera. "My camera on the other hand…" She unfolded the screen and checked over the case. "It's still rolling," she said, surprised. She stopped it and replayed the footage. "Guess they make these better than the studio ones, you can't even sneeze without breaking those." She paused. "Wow…"

I took a few steps so I could look over her shoulder. The camera had been facing her on the ground when the lion came up behind her. It was a spectacular shot that any director would have been supremely proud of, but this was no movie. This was real, and she could have been torn limb from limb at any moment.

"Guess the camera gods were smiling on me," she said, and smiled, too.

She was going to be the death of me, I swore it. "Yes, what really matters is that you captured such a golden moment on film."

"Whoa! I got you pulling that thing out of your shoulder!"

I let her get away with changing the subject, because I didn't want her to think too much about what lay ahead of us. It was nice just listening to her babble anyway, even if it was nervously. Everything about her voice reminded me of how much I loved her and that she was still alive.

When we climbed up to the second storey again, she jumped across without hesitation. That, at least, was comforting.

I reloaded my gun, collected my rope, and walked over to the doorway Pierre had disappeared through. It led downwards, into the rock. Taking my torch out, I shone it down into the hole. I'd taken special care to buy one with a very strong beam, but still the light didn't fall on any sort of surface.

I bent down and picked up a stone from the floor near us and threw it in. It was a good twenty seconds before I heard it hit the ground far below.

"Maybe he fell and died?" Sam suggested, aiming her camera into the hole.

"I hope not," I told her, and she looked confused. "Then I wouldn't get the chance to kill him."

"I can't believe you're saying that on camera," she said incredulously and pointed it at me.

I took the camera off her and angled it at my face. "Everyone," I told the lens, "For what that bastard did to Samantha Nishimura, I plan to try and kill him."

Despite the content of what we were discussing, Sam was laughing. She pushed my arm out but positioned my wrist so we were still in frame. "How do you think I should thank her?" she asked the camera, and then wrapped her other arm around my neck and pulled me into a firm kiss.

It was the last thing I had expected in a place like this, and I didn't want it to end. When it did, Sam didn't look at the footage straight away are per normal. She just gazed across at me. "There," she said. "Neither of us can die now. The world just doesn't work like that."

I hoped she was right.


	26. Chapter 26

"Are you sure that's safe?" Sam nudged the ice axe with the toe of her boot, not looking very convinced. "Because that's a _really_ long way to fall if it's not."

I'd managed to tie the rope to the base of the axe, and then had gone scouting around the edge of the doorway to find somewhere to hook it so we could climb down after Pierre. The doorway seemed the obvious choice, and it seemed secure enough.

"Safe enough to climb down into a hole." I said, and gave it a good tug. It held, and that would have to suffice. "Providing the hole is safe."

Sam had the camera rolling, but wasn't paying it much attention as she watched me. I took the waist harness out of my belt bag, untwisted it and then stepped into it. While I was fiddling with the winches, Sam tried to copy me with one hand. I had actually expected her to get it all wrong – I certainly had the first time I'd tried to rig myself up – but after I'd checked over her straps and knots, it turned out she'd managed well enough on her own.

"Not just a pretty face, hey?" she said, grinning at me.

I slipped the rope through both of our harnesses, and stood against the edge of the hole with my back to it. "I hate this part," I confessed, and put a boot over the edge, leaning backwards until I was at right-angles with the wall. It was the best way to keep the rope taught, but I'd never become completely used to how it felt.

As I lowered myself slowly down the wall into the darkness, I turned my headlamp on. All it basically served to do was show me the rough texture of the wall I was facing. I could see the red flashing LED on Sam's camera against her silhouette in the doorway. "Oh, my God," she said. "I just have this image of myself using this clamp thing wrong and going sliding down the rope and killing us both."

It took some coaxing from me to get her to lean horizontal to the wall, but eventually we were both edging slowly along the rope down into the darkness.

It looked as if the area we were descending into had once been an enormous underground network of walkways and temples. I couldn't see very much except what was in front of me, but I got Sam to use the light-measure function so I could get a glimpse of the whole area. It was far bigger than the folly, and so deep that even with the strobe I couldn't see the floor. The rope ran out well before we reached it.

"Do it again," I told her, and she used the light-measure while I desperately tried to use the half-second it gave me to get an idea of the area around us. "And again."

"It'll run the battery flat if we keep using it," Sam warned me. "And I only bought one replacement. Can you just use the flashlight?"

Since the torch had been no help before, I didn't think it was going to be much use again. "It's not strong enough, and the beam is really narrow."

Sam fiddled with the camera for a few moments. "Hey, I've got an idea," she said. "Night mode." There were a few beeps while she switched it around. I could see her panning around above me. "Wow, this works great. Look!" She leant backwards on the rope and I stretched up to meet her. The picture was in shades of green, but I was able to take aspect of the area. Behind us in the middle was a staircase that looked as if it may once have been linked by bridges to rooms cut into the stone wall. I moved the camera a little, trying to guess how far away it was. I decided I could probably make it, now I knew exactly where to shine the torch.

"Here, hold this," I told Sam, handing her the torch. I showed her where to shine it, and then began to unthread the rope from my harness. When I was just hanging by my hands, I had a good long look at the distance I had to cover, and then pushed myself off the wall toward it. I could hear Sam take a deep breath just before my side connected with the edge of a broken walkway. Grateful for my gloves, I drove my fingertips into the stone until I had a firm grip and then I pulled myself to stand.

"Please tell me I don't need to do that." Sam was shining the torch at me.

"You'll actually have a better chance of making it from up there than I did," I promised her. "After you've undone yourself, throw me the end of the rope and the torch, I'll light the edge for you."

It took her far too long to unthread the rope because she was so preoccupied, but eventually she was free and able to throw me both. She threw them rather wide of me, but I managed to catch both of them without stumbling off the ledge. After several minutes, with the camera hanging around her neck, she talked herself into making the jump. She needn't have been so worried about it, though: she actually landed more or less on her feet. She straightened, looking triumphant. "Must be my sensible shoes," she said.

As she took a couple of steps towards the edge to film down it, I saw again that she was favouring one of her legs over the other. When I asked her about it, she said, "Blisters."

I took the end of the rope and whipped it a few times to try and unhook the axe. When the axe actually came sailing toward us, we scattered with our hands over our heads because we couldn't actually see properly where it was headed.

"That would be total irony," Sam said after it had landed somewhere and I was pulling at the rope to retrieve it. "We survived Yamatai and all the crap that's happening now only to be killed by your axe."

The central staircase was missing a number of sections, but was basically a stable structure leading all the way down. It wouldn't have taken us that long to get to the ground, except that every time we reached a new level, I took the camera off Sam to have a look at the architecture. Makeshift bricks and ledges had been cut into the very rock as if to make the rock appear to be the outside of a temple. I could see where the bridges would once have been, and it looked as if they had been cut out of solid rock, too.

"This is amazing," I told Sam, trying to operate the zoom. "The expertise that must have been required to design something like this…" Sam was giving me the same look I gave her when she was gushing about documentaries. "It's not as if they would just have been able to use excavators and jackhammers to move the rock." I panned around. "I think there's text over the doorways, but I can't see it properly." I held the camera toward her. "How do I make the image sharper?"

"Film in daylight," she said. "Night Mode is always grainy."

That hadn't really been the answer I was looking for. I pointed the camera back at the doorway and pressed the button Sam used to measure the light. It flickered briefly, not long enough for me to read the text while I was filming, but enough for me to rewind the footage and pause it.

"You're going to run it flat," Sam warned me. "We really need to manage the battery power a lot better if we want both my batteries to last the whole time."

I glanced up in the corner of the LCD panel while I was adjusting the zoom on the paused image: _41%._ I didn't think that was too concerning, especially since Sam said she had that other battery.

Once I'd centered the image on the screen, I squinted at it. "'Poseidon'," I read, or at least I assume that's what I read, because it was in Greek Alphabet and some of the letters were a little different. It made sense that the rooms would be temples, I thought. All the most amazing ancient architecture was always in honour of deities.

I really wanted to look inside all of the rooms, but I was also aware of the fact that the clock was ticking and somewhere Pierre had a huge head start in getting to the Scion in this Tihocan's tomb.

"Jingle bells, jingle bells..." Sam half-sang to me.

"I know, I know, I'm taking ages," I said. "I know we've got to go, I just wanted..." I looked back towards the rooms that I desperately yearned to explore but didn't have time to. "Okay, I'm coming."

"So's Christmas. Let's get going, this place is giving me the creeps. There's something moving over there and I can't see what it is because you have the camera." I handed the camera back to her, and she pointed it upwards. "Ugh, _bats_ ," she said as we continued down the staircase.

The ground was damp and mossy, and there were several bodies of dead lions lying half-submerged in puddles. All of them had bullet wounds, and we followed the trail of bloodied footsteps to an open doorway. There were a number of mechanisms that had already been shifted. I filmed the detail on them, figuring I could examine them later.

"No mystery which way he went," Sam observed.

I took my gun out, just in case. The doorway lead into a long corridor that was, again, half-filled with water. "Give me your phone," I told her, and then wrapped both of them and the iPad very tightly in the plastic shopping bags from the adventure store. "Is that camera water proof?"

She nodded. "Yeah, but when they say 'water proof', they don't actually mean you can take it deep-sea diving or anything. It'll be okay to get splashed." We waded into the water which turned out to only be about waist-height, and were moving through it when the surface of the water move in a way I didn't expect.

I stopped. "Did you feel that?"

"Feel what?"

"That," I said as the water moved again. I looked down at the surface, which was brown and opaque. I couldn't see into it at all, but I could see movement that we weren't causing. "Back, get back!" I yelled at Sam, who didn't waste a second splashing back towards the doorway. I fired into the water as I followed her.

I wasn't until we'd left the water that what had been there emerged to follow us: an _enormous_ ten-foot crocodile. It was moving slowly; someone had already shot it a few times before I had. I finished it off and then put a hand to my chest and felt my heart going at a million miles an hour.

"If the archeology thing doesn't work out, I'm marketing you as a younger, hotter Steve Irwin," Sam said, also breathless, as she walked up to the corpse and filmed up close to it. It jerked as it was dying, and she shrieked and jumped away from it.

"I wonder if there are more?" I said, looking dubiously at the water as it fell still again.

"Probably not," Sam said. "They're pretty territorial." When I narrowed my eyes at her, she explained, "Hey, if you hadn't kept telling me to turn Crocodile Hunter down so you could ace your A-levels, you'd know that, too."

We ventured into the water again and were fortunately not eaten by crocodiles.

As we approached the other end of the corridor, it became increasingly obvious there was a light source that wasn't coming from our headlamps. The corridor opened up into another cavern, but since the room had been cut, the rocks forming the ceiling had cracked. Sunlight streaked in through them far, far above us.

I switched off my lamp, looking upward at the cracks. Sam made a noise next to me and had her camera pointing forwards. A section of a large building lay ahead of us, and the outside of it looked like a multistory Acropolis. Even though it was mostly cracked and crumbling, it still held its basic shape. I could never imagine how people managed to build such incredible places with so little technology: it was the true definition of genius. I'd have put money on the houses that were being built today even with modern technology not even making it to a hundred years, let alone several thousand. We could learn so much from these people, I thought, gazing up at the beautiful ruins.

Underneath the section of building a cut-stone corridor had been dug, and it looked like something that you might use to get into a football stadium. We walked through it.

When we came out on the other side, the sunlight was a lot brighter and I had to shut my eyes against it for a moment after having been underground so long. When I'd adjusted to the light, I heard Sam say beside me, "Whoa..."

We were standing at the edge of an enormous, football-field sized amphitheatre. In every direction there were two levels of seating cut completely into the stone, and the second level towered right up into the roof. I couldn't look at the roof too carefully, because the sun was positioned directly above it, pouring through drilled holes in the shape of star constellations.

Every column was perfectly uniform and had incredible detail, every aspect of this amazing place was beautifully preserved after thousands of years.

Nobody found places like this anymore! This was a once-in-a-lifetime discovery, and I was so incredibly lucky to be standing here seeing it with my own two eyes. The vastness of it almost had a tangible weight. It was just so incredible and so unspoilt that I felt a wave of emotion and had to be careful I didn't tear up.

"Glad I bought you so many knickers," Sam said, chuckling at my reaction, and, of course, filming it.

"I can't..." I swallowed. "This can't be real."

She took a full panorama of the stadium. "After Yamatai and the Scion, _this_ is what you think isn't real?"

I wandered into the centre of the sandy field, the fine-grained sand caking around my wet boots. I couldn't have cared less what was happening with my feet, though, except where they were standing. This is where gladiators must have stood, I thought. This is what they must have seen, but with thousands of people seated above them. The noise must have been overwhelming; I tried to imagine it. "It's like the Colloseum," I decided, thinking I would have to visit that again, too.

As we neared the other side of the field, it became clear that what I had just assumed were boulders lying on the field were actually the bodies of freshly-shot lions.

"I guess will follow the corpses," Sam said.

"It's sad they all have to die," I said, bending down beside one. "They're probably the only remaining European lions left in the world. Real, live fossils."

"They might have died anyway when we take the Scion away from here," Sam said. "There's no food here. The water is completely gross. I think it's the only thing keeping them alive anyway."

As I was bent down, I heard gunfire and the suddenness of it surprised me. Sam yelped and jumped back as patches of sand around us sprayed up. Before I could even tell where it was coming from, I shouted to Sam, "Run around, just keep moving all over the place, it's really hard to aim at someone who's moving."

I ran, too, towards where I thought it was coming from. Finally, I saw a figure moving on the steps. When he saw me looking, he ducked behind one of the columns.

You bastard, I thought, I'll get you out of there. As much as I was absolutely loath to damage this ancient structure, I had to keep reminding myself of the reason we were down here in the first place. I aimed my pistol at top of the column he was behind, and fired until a few chunks of rock came loose and fell on him. He ran out from behind the pillar just as planned, and I shot at him as he sprinted across the seating. From what I could tell, though, he was too far away for me to be very accurate so none of the shots connected. While he was under cover, I quickly pushed a few more bullets into the magazine.

Before I'd finished reloading, he ran out from cover again. I hurriedly jammed the magazine back in, lifting the pistol and wondering what possessed a so-called 'professional' to do something so stupid as to run in a straight line across an area I was clearly ready to fire at.

Something was chasing him, something dark.

I dropped my gun a little to try and figure out what it was, but it wasn't until it ran through a streak of sunlight I realized it was a _gorilla._

Sam had noticed, too. "Look!" she yelled at me.

It was actually rather comical watching Pierre be chased by it, but as much pleasure as it gave me to let him make a fool of himself, I needed to kill him. I followed his progress with barrel of my gun, shooting each time I thought I had him in aim. He didn't fall, though, he just scrambled up the wall and climbed through a vent on the second level. The gorilla wasn't going to fit through the vent so paced a little at the bottom of it, probably hoping he'd come back.

When he didn't, the gorilla looked at us.

I don't want to kill you, I thought, pointing my gun at it. Please don't make me kill you.

Just like the wolves, it opted to just watch me with interest. I lowered my gun. Sam had stopped weaving all over the place and walked up to me. "I got all of that on film," she said with a big grin on her face.

The gorilla let us follow Pierre through the vent. I had my gun pointed between its eyes as we approached, but since we weren't actually running at it, it was displaying no aggression whatsoever. There was something intelligent and considered about the way it was looking at us that I found very unnerving, but it ended up being just as little threat to us as we were to it.

My main difficulty with the gorilla turned out to be how to get Sam to stop filming it. I took it as a personal victory when I'd finally got both of us into the vent and following Pierre.

The vent we'd climbed into was an aqueduct that led into another series of corridors. I turned my headlamp back on and insisted on walking ahead of Sam through them with my gun drawn. It suited Sam perfectly well because she clearly intended on having that camera pointed at me every possible second she could.

We reached the end of the corridors and there was an open pool which looked like a public bath. All of the tiles were flecked with gold and they sparkled under the light of my headlamp as I examined them. We waded through it, stepping out on the other side in what looked like a huge temple.

I didn't let Sam out into the open until we'd spent a good minute with the camera in Night Mode checking to make sure Pierre wasn't anywhere to be found. He wasn't, and the only structure of consequence in the room was an enormous statue that over the ages had completely collapsed in a pile of shattered limbs. The head had rolled over near the pool and I looked down at it. It had those cherubic features that made it seem like it wouldn't be out of place on any of the statues in Rome.

Sam was conducting her own investigation of the statue and had begun climbing up some of the limbs to get a shot of the pedestal it had been standing on.

The more I looked around the gold-filled room, the more I thought it was less like a temple and more like the throne room of a palace. Perhaps this was his tomb and in his honour the Romans had built him a replica throne room to be buried in? I wondered who the emperor was, though, because that might have given some hint about what this place was supposed to be. I would once have probably been able to guess who this tomb belonged to, but it had been too long since I'd taken classical archaeology classes and I couldn't remember any useful details.

While I had bent down to examine the gold veins in the face of the statue, there was a dull glow coming from the limb that Sam had just stepped onto. She hadn't noticed because she was filming over the other side of it. I had a very bad feeling about it as it intensified.

"Sam!" I shouted, and charged over to push her off it. She fell heavily on her side on the tiles and the camera clattered across the floor.

When she sat up and looked around us, I thought she probably expected to hear gunfire. None came, so she sat up and rubbed her hip. "What happened...?"

"Look!" I had been running my eyes over her to make sure she was okay, when my headlamp touched her feet I could hardly believe what I was seeing.

Her sensible shoes had half-turned to gold.

I reached out and touched it, feeling only cool metal instead of rubber soles.

"No way," Sam said, and stretched above her head to retrieve the camera. I didn't wait for her to take them off for me so I could examine them, I got stuck into the laces myself and tried to pull the stiff boots off. As I was trying to force off her left boot, she made a strangled noise. I looked up at her and she had her eyes jammed shut. When I managed to get her boot actually off, I saw why she'd been favouring her right leg: her left ankle was very swollen and one side of it was a deep red.

"You're hurt!" I forgot completely about the golden boot. "Why didn't you tell me?"

She opened her eyes. "How many times did you get hurt in Yamatai?" she asked, as if that was the answer. "I'll be okay, you were."

"You've been _walking_ on this?" I pressed against where the bones should be with my fingertips, just to make sure they were actually still where I expected them to be. They were, so it was most likely a soft tissue injury, maybe a tendon or a ligament.

She shrugged. "It doesn't hurt as much as you think," she said. "At least, when we're looking at all this cool stuff it doesn't."

I thought about the shrapnel wound in my shoulder that I'd hardly even noticed. "Well, it will hurt," I told her. "It will really hurt, and I don't think you should walk on it anymore."

She snorted. "So are you going to carry me all the way back up again?" It wasn't a genuine question. "It doesn't hurt that much now, I'll be okay." She was trying to reach for her golden boot to put it back on. Before she did, I insisted she let me strap her ankle with a pressure bandage from our small first aid kit. If she was going to be heroic about being hurt, at least I could try and prevent her from worsening the injury.

Once we'd got her standing again, she tested my strapping by taking a few steps. The soles of her boots made a really strange sound against the tiles, but she seemed passable otherwise. "They're really hard now, and really heavy," Sam said, looking down at them. "But I guess it will be okay."

We examined the statue, and the limb that had very nearly turned her to gold was a hand. Camera pointed at the limb, Sam dropped a few rocks onto it and filmed as they turned to gold. She carefully rescued a couple of smaller ones and put them in her belt-bag. "Souvenirs," she explained, choosing a third. "How cool would it be to get jewelry made out of them or something?"

There was almost no point in even trying to find the pedestal to read it anymore, since I knew who the statue was. We filmed a few seconds of it, anyway.

"King Midas," Sam read. "Or, at least, I suppose that's what 'Midas Rex' means. That's just amazing."

Amazing, and dangerous, I thought. It seemed like such a harmless thing to be able to do, to turn anything you want into gold. However, if Ms. Natla was able to rock the global share markets with her meddling, I couldn't imagine what this statue would go to the gold markets. It occurred to me you could also you could also kill someone and melt down their body without a trace. I shivered.

"Let's keep going," I said.

All the doorways had collapsed, and the only way out of the temple was another aqueduct that was at a very steep slope downward. We couldn't see what was at the bottom of it because once again it was pitch black.

"Give me the camera," I asked her, and she did. "I'll go down first and make sure he's not down there just waiting for us."

I sat at the edge of the duct and hopped into it. The tiles were wet enough that I slid down at quite a speed, eyes trained on the LCD to see what was ahead of me. The duct ended and suddenly and just like in Vilcabamba, I was airborne. I cried out for only a second before my back hit the water. I didn't sink very far, though, and I managed to get to the surface and shake the camera out before it stopped working and Sam _killed_ me.

I looked around with it, but soon realized the surfaces were all close enough for me to see with my headlamp.

My first impression of it was that it looked like an enormous public swimming pool, one that could fit practically all of Berkshire in it. I swam over to a wall that was dividing the pools up and put the camera on it. My pullover was heavy in the water, so I opted to just take it off and leave it on the side of the pool. At least the water wasn't freezing like it had been in Peru.

"Lara?" I heard Sam's voice shouting through the duct.

"It's okay, Sam!" I called back. "He's not here!"

I heard the sound of her pants sliding against the tiles and then she emerged in the air, too, landing slightly more gracefully and feet-first into the water. It was only as the gold of her boots glimmered in the lamplight that I realised what was going to happen.

She didn't rise to the surface.

Panic-stricken, I dumped the camera on the wall and dove under the surface of the water. My headlamp failed after only a few seconds of me being completely submerged, and so I was shouting and feeling around, trying to find her. My hand brushed something in the water – her pants, I think – and I pulled at them until I could feel her shoes. Mentally apologizing for how much it would hurt, I planted my own boot against her calf and forced the golden shoes from her feet, laces still tied.

Once they were both off I grabbed her and helped her return to the surface.

I was desperate for breath myself, and I was quite fit. I can't imagine how she must have felt in the minute or two without oxygen. She made the most awful, terrifying noise as she took a breath, crying out and coughing at the same time. I wrapped my arms around her to try and keep her afloat, but her struggling was pushing me under the water, too. She eventually let me take her to the side of the pool.

I nearly threw up from the amount of water in my stomach. Sam was clinging to the edge, half-crying as she coughed.

"That was my fault," I said through heaved breaths. "I didn't even think. God..." I pushed some of her wet hair out of her face. "I'm so sorry!"

She shook her head, but it was a few moments before she could say anything. "You always said my thing about expensive shoes would be the death of me."

I double-took. Did she really just _joke_ about what had happened? When she saw my expression, she chuckled, putting her head against the tiles on the side of the pool. "I think after that I need a hug," she said, and held an arm out to me. I swam underneath it. "Look, I'm still shaking." She was braced against the side, so I was able to put both of my arms around her.

I drew a long, deep breath and then exhaled, resting my cheek against her shoulder. I could hear her doing the same. She's okay, I thought. You can relax.

"I hope that's an axe you're poking me with," she said beside my ear, tone alight with amusement. "Actually, no I don't."

I pulled away a little so that I wasn't pushing it into her. "Sorry to disappoint you, but that's about all I've got to poke you with." Her headlamp was still working, and because it was shining right at me I couldn't see her expression very well.

"Oh, well," Sam said, still trying to sound cheerful despite her ragged breathing, "At least I won't get pregnant."

I had to laugh at that. "I can't believe you, I really can't," I said, pulling myself out of the water and helping her do the same. "You just nearly _drowned_."

"'Nearly' means I didn't," she pointed out. "Besides, you wouldn't have let that happen." She leaned and looked into the water. "I suppose my camera is down there somewhere with my shoes?"

"No, I put it on the side before I helped you," I said, walking around the outside of the pool to go and retrieve it. "And your complete faith in me is sort of scary."

I walked the camera back to her, and she accepted it and then pointed it at me again. "Here's my thrice heroine, Lara Croft, soaking wet from diving heroically–" she paused, "Whoops, totally shouldn't have bought you that baby blue t-shirt, though." I looked down, and in the light from her headlamp I could see my sports bra through the wet t-shirt. Since my bra wasn't see-through, I wasn't really concerned if the top was. "Or maybe that particular purchase just won us another hundred thousand loyal viewers."

I let her narrate all about what happened while I wrung my hair, smiling.

Pierre wanted to kill us, and would probably make another very good attempt to. Ms. Natla wanted to do God knows what to us, we were deep inside the earth with no guaranteed way to get out. She'd nearly been turned to gold, nearly drowned and had an ankle that looked like a blowfish, and I had a small chunk of flesh missing from my shoulder.

Yet, what struck me was just how very different this experience was to Yamatai. I remembered falling, and climbing and being shot at, but I remembered it so differently. I'd been terrified and so very alone, at least for most of it. This was something else. We were in mortal danger every second, but I was actually having fun with her.

"I love you," I said, interrupting her in the middle of her story.

She stopped talking and gaped over the LCD screen at me.

I had second-thoughts about my decision to tell her at that moment, feeling blood rise to my cheeks. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to–"

"–No, Lara, it's..." She swallowed. "It's… I don't think you've ever said that before."

I didn't think I had, either. It wasn't something I said often. Sam basically told every second person she totally loved them, and yet she wasn't saying anything to me right now, when I really needed her to. At least she had the courtesy to let the camera drop by her side, and I could see the red LED wasn't flashing, either.

"Nothing?" I asked her, and then turned away. "Okay."

"No, Lara…" She came up to me. "It's just…" She put her hand on my forearm. "I didn't know how you meant it."

"I meant it the way I said it." I pretended to be very engrossed in checking the operation of the torch. My heart was pounding just as much as it had been when I was trying to pull her golden boots off in the water. "Come on, let's get going." I made to walk away from her, but she stopped me.

"I can't read you at all," she said to the back of my head. "I really never have any idea what you're thinking when it comes to stuff like this."

I didn't turn to face her, because I was frightened of what she might be able to say, or worse, of what she might _not_ say.

"I think I've told you I love you about a thousand times or something, so even though I mean it, it probably doesn't really mean much if I say it again." She took a breath. "So maybe I should just tell you that there is no part of me that you can't have. I would do anything for you, and I'm not just saying that. I wouldn't even be alive if it weren't for you. Or I would be, but I wouldn't be me."

"You wouldn't have been part of the Sun Queen ritual or in here in the first place if it wasn't for me," I pointed out. "So you'd probably be fine."

"You're completely missing the point," she said. "I can't believe I just told you all of that and you're still stuck on Yamatai."

I nodded, but it felt like I was no closer to having her understand that I loved her than before I told her. While I was looking down at the tiles, I spotted a fluffy explorer sock. Of course, I thought, Sam doesn't have any shoes anymore.

"We can't go anywhere like that," I said, turning and pointing at her feet.

She gave me a frustrated look about the change of subject, but let it go. "They're pretty thick, I'll be okay."

"My feet are only half a size bigger," I bent down with the intention of taking my boots off and giving them to her. "But with those thick socks you're wearing, they'll probably—"

"Lara." She pulled me back up again. "Seriously, if you get to fight demons for me, I get to go barefoot for you." She paused. "Also you're being really weird, and I don't know what to do about it."

You could kiss me, I thought, but didn't say anything. I had already managed to turn what had been quite an enjoyable endeavour — near-death experiences excluded, of course — into something awkward. I didn't want to make it any worse. "It's okay, it'll go away," I told her. "Let's keep going."

She sighed audibly, and held the camera back up. The red LED started flashing again. "Okay, then."

We had to climb out of the room with all the pools, which was difficult because the walls were covered in algae and moss. The surface just gave no friction at all, and in the end, even with the rope ascender, it was incredibly difficult to even just climb off the rope up into the ledge. I'd smacked my shoulders on the wall a number of times, and my hands were really red from holding onto the body of the ascender. Sam hadn't fared much better. Once we were up on the ledge, she sat down and checked her knees. There were already bruises forming on them from when she'd slipped and they'd gone sailing into the wall.

In the room we'd climbed into there were a number of mechanisms that looked operational. I tried one of them experimentally. The immense sound of rushing water carried from the room we'd just finally managed to exit.

We went to stand by the entrance, Night Mode on, trying to figure out what had happened.

"It's full of water again," Sam said. "Right past where we were climbing."

It would have been _so_ much easier to get up to the room if we could have swum up to it, I thought. I angled the camera in her hands towards some enormous grates near the ceiling. "It must have come from those," I guessed. "Like a giant cistern."

It was interesting, but we needed to get the Scion. The only way out of the control room was another aqueduct. We stood together and looked down at it.

"I'm going first this time," Sam told me, and then didn't wait for my response before sitting on the edge and sliding down into it.

I jumped in straight after her and ended up almost with my feet against her back as the duct deposited us on dry soil at the base of an underground temple.

I saw the symbol of Atlantis over the doorway on the other side of the open space, so I guessed this must be the Tihocan's tomb that Pierre had mentioned. The path to what used to be a doorway was beside us, and burners were placed on either side of the path from the door to the temple. Several braziers hung along the far wall, the fire burning as hungrily as if it had only been lit a moment beforehand.

By the doorway to the temple, there were two oversized, grotesque statues. Firelight dances off them; they were centaurs with bird skulls for heads. The way they'd been positioned made it look as if they were guarding the doorway.

There was something about them... They were too detailed, I decided, and had too many textures and surfaces on them. Their skull-heads reminded me of my dream about Qualopec where the holes in his mask suddenly had eyes. I hoped I wouldn't need to walk underneath them.

As we were walking up the path, a figure wandered into the light under the statues.

Pierre had his index finger up, and the Scion threaded through it. He also had a smug grin on his face and a gun in his other hand. "You're too late," he said. "Perhaps if you'd spent less time ooh-ing and ahh-ing over all the broken rubble, you'd have beaten me."

"You're not actually out of here yet," I pointed out. "Maybe something will kill you before you leave."

"Are you suggesting that something might be you, Ms. Croft?" He strolled forward toward us, expertly cocking his pistol with a single hand. "Let me remove that silly idea from your head."

"Do you really want to do this, Pierre? Look at it, can't you feel the magic in it? Aren't you worried about even taking that item near someone like Ms. Natla?"

He pursed his lips, ignoring what I'd said. "Or, better yet, let's just remove that silly head altogether."

I'd drawn my own gun and was about to give him his last chance to reconsider, when he passed under the centaurs. Around his finger, the Scion began to hum and flicker with the sharp little lights I'd seen in Qualopec's fragment. He looked quizzically at it, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Beside me, I could hear Sam gasp. I had thought it was just about the Scion, but then she started frantically messing about in her bag. "My battery's dead!" she told me. "Fucking timing, I swear!"

As soon as the glow from the Scion fragment was bright enough to light the base of the centaurs, they began to tremble. One of their heads moved, and then the other, and then they were relaxing onto all fours from where they had been rearing. They were mummified like Qualopec's guards, but the bandages were already coming off them. Each time they moved, I could see the red, dried muscle pulling their limbs into action.

The harked back to the Oni on Yamatai, huge and only half-alive. I took a step back even though I was so very far away from them.

Sam was still desperately to load the new battery, muttering, "Come on, come on…" as she stared at the scene unfolding in front of us.

Pierre turned around toward them just as they were fully coming to their senses. He looked from one to the other, and then began to run toward us and the exit, twisting back towards them to fire rounds at them. They seemed startled his behavior and so took a few seconds before they determined what they were going to do about it.

Leaping off their pedestals, they charged after him, the sound of galloping hoof beats drowning out Pierre's gunfire.

I hadn't been able to see the objects they'd each been holding in the half-light of the doorway. As they passed the fires, the light reflected off ten foot spears and wide bronze shields printed with the symbol of Atlantis.

Well, I wasn't going to let Pierre make it to us, not with them following him. He was running in a straight line toward me, too terrified by the centaurs to bother ducking and weaving to evade my bullets. I lifted my gun and fired one round straight into his thigh.

He stumbled and dropped, clutching it and trying to get up again. He couldn't; I must have shattered one of his bones. When he realised what had happened, he looked from the centaurs who were fast approaching him to me, and then pointed his gun at me. "You fucking bitch! You're coming with me!"

"Run!" I yelled to Sam and grabbed her hand, pulling her at full pelt around the boundary of the cavern. I could hear his gunfire ricochet off the rocks behind us. She was crying out — I thought at first in fear, and then I remembered she had no shoes and there was rubble everywhere.

The centaurs made it up to him and raised their spears. I stopped, bracing myself for what I knew I was about to see.

Each of them thrust their spear into him so firmly that they struggled to pull it out of the soil afterwards. One of them lifted him up into the air with his whole body impaled on it; he was clutching at the spear through his stomach and kicking with his legs. There was blood absolutely gushing out of the hole in his pelvis left by the other spear.

"Oh, my God." Sam had her hand over her mouth. "I mean, he's a jerk, but… Oh, my God."

The centaur held him suspended in the air as his struggles became weaker, but lost interest with him after he bled out. It swung the spear in an arc, throwing his body across the whole area toward us. It tumbled at our feet. We both stared down at it, horrified.

The scion was still on his index finger.

Sam saw where I was looking. "Lara…"

We didn't have a choice, this is what we'd come here for. I crouched and pulled it off.

The centaurs reacted _immediately_ as if they could physically feel the Scion fragment being touched. Looking directly toward us, they gave the fires a very wide berth and came thundering in our direction.

Sam screamed at the top of her lungs, and I'm sure I must have done the same. We weren't wounded like Pierre had been, but I couldn't imagine there would be many places we could run that would escape them with the length of those spears.

"Lara!" she was screaming, "Lara, what do we do?"

"I don't know!" I yelled back, my voice covering several octaves.

When we reached the doorway and had to run around the giant burners again, I noticed once again the centaurs were avoiding them.

"Fire!" I said, "Fire, do something with the fire!"

They were quickly closing the distance between us. I tried toppling a burner behind us to give us some extra time. It hardly made any difference, though, they were just much too fast for us.

When they were so close I could feel the vibration of their hooves on the ground, I felt Sam twist. She'd obviously managed to slot the battery into the camera, because she held it up and shone the forward light straight at them like she'd blinded me in the bus.

The vibrations stopped and I looked over my shoulder as we ran – they'd scatted and dropped their weapons, clawing at their 'eyes'. I couldn't believe it.

"Over here," I said, pulling her back over to the burners. I picked up one of them by its handles, dragging it towards the centaurs as they pranced and rubbed their empty sockets.

"No, Lara!" Sam was screaming, "No! No! Don't get that close to them, please!"

I ignored her, rushing straight up to them and flinging the burning embers all over their bandaged bodies.

They caught fire immediately, and the sound they made… God, it can only be described as something from beyond the grave.

I backed away with my gun drawn and my jaw open, but it was clear they were going to keep burning until they fell.

Sam was shaking when I made it back to her, her whole body trembling so violently can I could even feel it as I put an arm around her shoulder. She was breathing unevenly.

We watched the burn into cinders and collapse on the stone of the pathway.

"I think Himiko's going to have some company in my nightmares," Sam murmured as we walked up to their charred bodies. She took some footage of them, anyway.


	27. Chapter 27

Just like Peru, there was no quick exit from Tihocan's tomb; we had to return the way we'd come.

Sam was _filming_ Pierre's body as I searched it, getting his blood all over my gloves and all up my arms. It wasn't a pleasant process. I looked up at her. "Really, Sam?"

"I know, I know," she said, looking stricken. "I think I just about guaranteed I have to do my own editing. I could not give this footage to one of dad's studios. There's just…" She made a strangled noise. "God, you can see right in."

Pierre had some useful equipment I didn't have, the most useful being a grappling hook. Since he clearly knew about all the parts of the Scion, I also took his satellite phone and his wallet. I could search it later for passwords and data that might be useful. On the way back out, I also picked up his flung pistol and tucked the nose of it in my belt.

Travelling with the grappling hook was much faster, but the climb back up to the surface was still a long and arduous process. By the time we reached the folly, the muscles in my arms and shoulders were shaking so much as to make it almost impossible for me to hold my weight on the grapple.

I crawled out of the hole and onto the floor of the second level, unclipping my belt bag and lying flat on my stomach. The stone was cold, but I was too tired to care very much about that. I could have slept there, I think, if my gun hadn't been jutting into my tender ribs.

Sam followed after me, putting her head on my lower back.

"Well, ain't that sweet." Larson's heavy Southern accent made it impossible to mistake who that voice belonged to.

Sam's head jerked up, and I rolled slowly over.

"What are you doing here?" Sam asked him. "Did she send you to kill us?"

Larson shook his head. He was leaning against a broken column in the moonlight, giving no indication he expected to need to either defend himself or attack us. "Nah," he said. "Her instructions were to get the Scion fragment, but I think my purpose is mainly to get you to waste your bullets and chase you straight into her men."

"Thanks," I said, standing and helping Sam up. "Which direction are they in?"

"No point in trying to avoid them."

I could feel Sam nervously threading her fingers through mine. I glanced down and saw the red LED was still flashing, and she'd very surreptitiously pointed the camera toward him. The way she was holding the small device would have obscured it from him unless he knew to look for it.

"So, what, you're just telling us to give up, hand ourselves in and, well, let her do whatever she wants to do with the Scion?"

He shook his head. "I'm telling you that you will get caught. You're going to have to accept that." He walked toward us, holding out his hand. "She expects me to fail to get the Scion fragment off you. That's exactly why you should give it to me."

I looked at his open hand.

"No way," Sam said, before I had the chance to.

Larson looked at her with some surprise. "It speaks," he said, and then joked, "Guess you wouldn't make such a great little wife after all, despite all that money."

She narrowed her eyes at him, but didn't say anything else. I was reasonably certain he didn't mean it, anyway.

It was too much to process. I hadn't gone this far to just hand the Scion fragment over to someone working for her, even if he'd betrayed her at least once before. Pierre had warned me I wasn't the girl to keep the Scion from being completed, and despite the fact he hadn't been that man, either, I didn't want to prove him right. As much as I wanted to trust Larson… he had helped us escape, and because of escaping, we had retrieved the second fragment. It was entirely possible he was just pretending to be on our side, and the second we gave him the fragment he'd just hand it over to her.

"Look, I appreciate you helping us escape before," I said. "But that doesn't mean I'm just going to hand this fragment over to you."

He exhaled. "You're going to be putting it right in her hands if you leave here with it," he warned me. "I just can't let that happen."

I watched him for a few moments, noting his choice of words and his resolve. He wasn't going to let us leave, I thought, despite how calm he was being about it. We'd have to find another way.

I pretended to consider his words, and it must have been convincing, because Sam was shaking my arm. "Give me a moment with Sam," I told him. "I need to discuss it with her."

He looked between us and then nodded. Wandering over to edge the second floor, he dropped off it. I could hear him whistling below. The second he was out of sight, Sam turned to me. "What are you doing?" she whispered, "We can't just give it to him!"

"I'm not going to," I said, and tried to clip my bag back on as quietly as possible. "Come on," I whispered, taking her hand and leading her very quietly over to the open windows. The grapple made too much noise, so I very, very carefully hooked the axe on the window and we both scaled the outside wall trying to not so much as breathe. Unfortunately, as I was trying to retrieve the axe, it struck a ledge on the wall as it was falling. Being completely steel, it rang loudly like a chime. I didn't even bother with the rope, I just left in a pile and grabbed the axe.

"Go!" I told Sam, pushing her towards the steps before Larson could follow us. We struggled down them with our shaky legs – Sam was increasingly finding it difficult to use her left ankle. I wasn't faring much better. I was just so horribly weak, I found I couldn't trust my knees and several times I stumbled and nearly pitched forwards into the darkness below us on the cut staircase.

The moonlight from the opening at the bottom of the cliff face was such a welcome sight. I laboured toward it, thinking that perhaps we should head north. I remembered seeing a tiny town that way on the map, maybe twenty or thirty kilometres. I had no idea how we were going to make it that far, but we had to try.

We jogged into the open.

I was trying to figure out the best way to travel when I realized Sam wasn't behind me. I turned around to see where she was when something that felt like a lorry hit me square in the back.

I couldn't imagine what it was, because I didn't fall over straight away. I couldn't really imagine anything at all, it was as if I'd suddenly been plunged into ice cold water. I gasped for breath and the skin on my back burnt like it was on fire. I was dimly aware of the fact I had fallen on the ground and there was someone standing over me, but I couldn't piece two thoughts together other than fact I couldn't breathe.

When the burning stopped, I tried to roll to push myself up. My arms hardly moved at all. It should have hurt to have my face pressed so firmly into the gravel but my skin was completely numb.

"Sam?" I tried to say. It emerged from my mouth as barely more than a gentle breath.

"Tie her up," someone was saying. "And the other one. Put all their crap in the trunk."

After they'd picked me clean of weapons and gear, I was being dragged by my ankles along the ground until finally someone lifted me up. The sensations in my limbs slowly began to return, so I waited until I was hoisted on someone's shoulders and then I kicked him very squarely in the stomach until he dropped me.

"Sam!" I managed to say properly this time.

I couldn't walk properly, but I could see Sam over the shoulders of a man behind us. As I staggered over to him, he lifted his gun at me and pulled the trigger.

I dropped like a rock.

The shock was paralysing, as if I had someone standing on my chest and pushing their boot into my ribs repeatedly. As soon as I could move my arms again I pulled my fingers out of my glove and tried to feel around my chest for the wetness I knew would be blood.

I was still damp from the cistern, but there was nothing else on my chest except grit from falling onto the ground.

Someone shone a torch in my face. "You want to try that again, we'll Taser you again," he said. "We're not supposed to hurt you, so don't make our job difficult." He gestured at someone else. "Tie her hands and feet, I don't want any more injuries."

Before they were able to, I very cautiously felt down in the cargo pockets on my calves where I'd put the Scion. To my relief, it was still there; they probably assumed it was in my bag with the other things I was carrying.

I heard Sam groan. I looked up and saw why Sam hadn't spoken: they'd gagged her.

"I'm here, Sam, " I said to her as I was rolled over and my wrists were zip-tied. I could feel the same being done to my feet. It was too dark and there were too many torches for me to figure out how many men there were, but I thought there was at least a dozen. Some of them were talking to each other and there were a few separate conversations. With that many, I may have had a shot at escaping on my own but there was no chance I'd go without Sam. I cooperated and let myself be hoisted over someone else's shoulders.

"Hey! Who said you boys could have all the fun without me?" That was Larson's voice. I could hear the heavy footsteps of someone jogging over to us.

God, he'd been right. I was so _stupid.  
_

"Nice work," the man who'd spoken to me before said to him. "Chased them right into us. Cleanest fucking job I've ever done. I'm buying you a beer tonight."

"Keep your beer," Larson told him, hammering him on the back. "I'm carrying my prize back to Ms. Natla." He approached the man that was carrying me and made a 'gimme' motion. My captor did as he was told, and strong hands hoisted me over Larson's shoulder, instead. Larson's shoulders were much broader and much more muscular than the first man's and hurt a lot less against my sore ribs. I was thankful I was still partially numb from the Taser.

"Been a while since I got to carry one this cute home," he joked, and some of the men laughed. He stopped for a moment, leaning forwards and rolling me into his arms as if he were carrying me across the threshold. I looked up when I saw he was mouthing something to me. I squinted at him.

He was mouthing, 'Where is it?'

I looked down at the calf pockets in my cargos. He nodded, and then threw me over his shoulders again. "On second thoughts, I think I prefer having that ass as close to my face as possible." Just to accentuate his words, he smacked it. There was more laughter.

"Your wife got legs like these, Kostas?" The man he'd been talking to shook his head. "Maybe she did twenty years ago, right?"

I felt Larson's hand travelling from my thigh to my ankle. When his fingers passed over the pocket with the Scion in it, he made incredibly short work of the zip and the Scion fell into his hand. He left his hand there a minute as if he were feeling me up, and then I felt him put his hand by his side. His shoulder tensed as he tucked it in his pocket.

"What do you say, girl?" Larson was still speaking to me like a piece of meat. I knew it was all for show, but it still made me feel ill. "How about we have a private party before I deliver you to the boss?"

"Go fuck yourself," I said, loudly enough for everyone to hear. The men laughed.

I looked back at Sam, but could only see her legs and those pink socks.

I heard a car door opening , and Larson lifted me from his shoulders and placed me inside what looked like a Range Rover. Just as the other man had instructed, someone opened the boot and from what I could see through the back window, all our possessions were thrown in before Kostas slammed it shut.

Larson and Kostas got in beside me, and another two men climbed in the front.

"Sam…?" I asked, trying to look out the window into the dark.

"Other car," Larson said, patting my thigh. "But you can pretend I'm her if you like."

The engine started and began to roll forward. We were clearly off-road; the car was bumping all over the place and because of my tied hands, I couldn't sit properly in the seat. Not that I cared at all about my comfort, because all I could think about was Sam in the other car with all those men and no Larson.

It took much less time to drive back than it had to walk. The cars all pulled up alongside somewhere calling itself Hotel Rex... Were they going to take both of us bound as prisoners through the main reception of a hotel?

Kostas alighted first, on the other side of the car. I leaned into Larson, and his eyes darted up to make sure no one was looking. "Don't let it get too close to her," I murmured.

"Seen it," he breathed back, and then said at normal volume, "Open wide." He was holding a rolled scarf. I let him put it in my mouth and tie it firmly behind the back of my head.

From the other car, I could see a man herding Sam out. Her feet were free, and through her socks it was really clear one of her ankles was much bigger than the other. We made eye contact – she was really scared. She kept watching me until she was dragged, stumbling, inside.

As it turned out, we _were_ taken through the central lobby. The staff were suspiciously nonchalant about it; I wondered if their pockets had been greased to not look in our direction.

I was carried past reception through a long, well-lit corridor that opened out into a huge conference room. There were only a few chairs set up on the other side of the room, though. The rest were stacked around the perimeter.

Ms. Natla was leaning calmly against one of the tables in front of them, long legs crossed at the ankles.

If my heart hadn't been pounding until that point, it started as soon as I laid eyes on her.

She smiled as we made eye-contact. I was bound, gagged, and being toted over someone's shoulder and she was _smiling_ at me as if I was simply entering an ordinary board meeting.

"Good work, Larson," Ms. Natla said to him in a very professional tone as he dumped me in one of the chairs. Sam was led to another several feet beside me and forced to sit down. We looked at each other. I could see how quickly she was breathing.

"Good Evening, Ms. Croft, Ms. Nishimura," Ms. Natla said. The use of our surnames unnerved me. She then looked at Larson, who was trying his very best to stand as far back as possible. "Ungag them, please." He followed her instructions. "I believe you and I have a contract," she said, speaking to me again.

I didn't say anything, because I didn't know what to say. She approached me; she smelt of French perfume.

"I'll get their gear," Larson offered. She barely glanced at him, and he took that as tacit permission and left. Kostas and a couple of her other mercenaries were still standing behind us. I could hear them shifting their weight and fidgeting.

"I asked you a question," she said, reminding me of why she was so intent on me.

"No you didn't," I pointed out. "It was a statement."

She didn't even _flinch_. Her lips were just pulled in a cool, professional smile. "I would like to thank you for not crashing my helicopter," she said.

That made me stare at her. What?

"You must have been scared," she said, walking slowly around me. "Someone had drugged your best friend. I understand why you felt you needed to burn my tent and run away."

I looked across at Sam: she was watching us with her jaw open.

"It must be a relief for you to know that it wasn't me who hurt her." I felt fingertips trail across my shoulders. They brushed over my shrapnel wound, but I could hardly feel it. Her touch was still electric despite the fact I knew how dangerous she was. "I think you found out what sort of man Pierre is, didn't you? He doesn't play well with others. I enjoy your company so much more." She chuckled once. "Although, of course, I would prefer to simply invite you to a meeting rather than needing to have my men kidnap you in order to get you to attend."

Larson returned with our possessions and dumped them on the table where Ms. Natla had been leaning a minute or two beforehand. He was about to go through them when Ms. Natla stopped him.

"So, what do you say, Lara? Would you like to hand over that fragment and return to my team? There's still a spot at my side." She completed her full circle of me, standing with her legs touching mine as she held my eyes.

Sam was actually the one who spoke first. "Uh, aren't you at least slightly angry about what my dad's doing to you?"

Her eyes flickered away from mine toward Sam for a moment, smile still enduring. "Well, of course I feel disappointed that Alison found someone who was willing to pay her more money that I was. She was a very valuable employee." She tilted her head. "But, really, all you did was punish my other employees. Our share price has tumbled so far none of these fine men will get their bonus this year." She nodded at them. "And they're quite upset about that, aren't they?"

The men all made affirmative noises, but without seeing them I couldn't see if they were _really_ agreeing with her, or just obeying their boss.

"Perhaps later I'll give them an opportunity to express their sentiments to you personally, Ms. Nishimura."

She turned her attention back to me before I could say anything about it. "So, Ms. Croft. I like to think I'm a rather generous employer. I'm happy to allow you to continue on my staff if you turn over the Scion fragment to me." She smiled warmly. "Is it in your bags?"

I didn't answer.

"Larson, could you have a look through Ms. Croft's bags, please?"

I watched him completely empty out all of our belongings, everything, until the table was covered in climbing gear, sandwich wrappers and all our electronics. Ms. Natla did wander over to have a look at them, lifting her iPad out of the mess. She held it up toward me. "Thank you for taking such good care of it for me." She handed it to Larson who in turn handed it to one of the men standing behind us.

"It seems it's not in your bags." She observed, turning back to me. "Stand up."

When I didn't, one of the men behind me stepped forward and forced me to.

She looked me up and down. I couldn't breathe. Surely she wouldn't frisk me, not in front of all these people?

"As much as I'd probably enjoy searching you myself…" she said, sounding resigned. She looked behind me. "Cut her free."

The zip-ties were cut, and I shook out my hands, noticing red streaks on my wrists from how tight they'd been. I wanted to look more closely at them, but I was afraid to take my eyes off her in case she did something, but what I was expecting, I didn't know.

"Now," Ms. Natla said. "Since I remember a very entertaining show a few days ago," she said. "I thought you could show me all the hiding places on your person yourself."

"No…" I said hesitantly, looking across at Sam, and the glancing at the men behind me.

"That wasn't a request."

I swallowed, turning out all of my pockets.

"Shoes," she said, and I took them off and shook them out, and my socks after them. "Pull the fabric of your pants tight along your legs." I did as she told me. Of course, there was nothing there. My top was damp enough for it to be clear there was nothing underneath it. She made me take off the t-shirt anyway, probably just to punish me. My sports bra was modest enough to not embarrassment as I stood in front of her in it, though.

She stepped back, and it was the first time she looked anything except perfectly calm and perfectly composed. "Where is it?" she asked, frustration ever so slightly audible.

"I don't have it," I said.

She watched me for a moment, and then looked at the men. "Very well then, Ms. Croft, if we must do this," she said, her tone becoming venomous. She spoke to the men. "Search the other girl."

They all converged on Sam, who shrieked and struggled. I made to try and help her, but Larson pulled me back and held me by my arms. Sam was stripped to her underwear which was far racier than mine, and it was quickly clear she didn't have it.

She was crying silently as they let her put her clothes back on, it absolutely broke my heart. I also knew exactly why Ms. Natla had done it, and it was nothing to do with the Scion.

I was going to _kill_ that woman. I imagined my bare hands around her neck so I could watch every detail on her face as I strangled her.

As I looked back at Ms. Natla my sentiments must have been evident, because she raised her eyebrows. "If you'd just given it to me, Ms. Croft, we wouldn't have needed to subject Ms. Nishimura to any of that, would we?"

"Pierre was right about you."

She didn't expect me to say that. I found it a very relevant detail. "I wasn't aware you two were on speaking terms," she commented, and then walked right up to me. "Where is it, Ms. Croft?"

Larson released me and went to stand with the other men, away from her.

She towered over me despite the fact we were both standing. "I told you," I enunciated. "I don't have it."

She put a finger under my chin and tilted it as far as it would extend upwards. "Then who has it?"

"Pierre."

Her brow lowered. "You're lying."

My legs were shaking. "I'm not," I said. "If you want to look at the table, I have his phone." She narrowed her eyes at me. "He gave it to me so you couldn't track him."

She examined me for several seconds and then spun on her stilettos and strode over to the table. Roughly pushing the items around, she located a satellite phone, clearly recognising it. For a moment, just a moment, I thought she might actually squeeze the phone so hard that it would be crushed in her hand.

She looked back at me, features sharp. When she walked up to me this time, she took aspect of me again, and I think I actually saw a measure of disappointment on her face. "Ordinarily I rather appreciate a woman with spirit, but you are really trying my patience." She held my chin again, this time in a pincer grip. "You have such potential," she said, almost looking wistful. "Such enormous potential, and _this_ is how you plan to use it?"

"I plan to stop you completing the Scion," I said. "Whatever you want to use it for, you're not going to get the opportunity."

There was not a shadow of doubt on her face. "Yes, I am," she said. "You are just causing yourself and your girlfriend pain and discomfort by not cooperating, and in the end I will complete the Scion anyway." She shook her head at me as if I were a misbehaving teenager.

I glared back at her, unblinking.

"Lock them in separate rooms," she ordered the men. "It will give Ms. Croft 'the opportunity' to come to her senses and reconsider my offer." She strolled back to the table, this time selecting Sam's camera. "The new A30," she said to Sam. "Very nice. I can't wait to see what quality video the new model takes."

Taking the camera with her, she exited the conference room.


	28. Chapter 28

The rooms Sam and I were taken to were on the top floor, I suppose to prevent us from being able to easily escape out the windows. After I'd spent a good three minutes trying to pry the door open and found myself face-to-face with a pistol, I went to investigate the window, anyway. Pulling the curtains aside, I saw several men milling around on the ground below, smoking together. When one of them saw me, he waved and saluted. The movement caused his jacket to fall open and I could see a gun tucked in his belt. Okay, so the windows were out.

While I was pacing back and forth, trying to figure out what to do, I ate all the complimentary biscuits from the kitchenette.

The kitchenette drawers had two butterknives in them, so I put one of them in my pocket. It was so blunt I couldn't imagine what use it would be, but it was steel so it was better than being empty-handed. There was nothing else very useful in the room, unless I particularly wanted to pull apart lamps and steal the coat-hangers. They were wooden and probably useful for something, but I didn't know how I'd carry them so I left them in the empty wardrobe.

Any second now, Ms. Natla would come marching in here, having seen the footage of Pierre dead and Larson offering to take the Scion. The ruse would be over. I wondered what she'd do to Larson, but most of all I was worried about Sam. She _knew_ Sam was what mattered to me. If she wanted to punish me, she'd do something to her.

"Lara?" I didn't think I'd heard properly at first, and Sam had to call me a couple more times before I realised it _was_ her, and her voice was coming from under the bed.

I got down on all fours and crawled underneath it.

There was a small grate on the skirting board between the rooms, and I could see an eye in it. "Sam?" I whispered.

I could see the eye narrow as she smiled. "Oh, my God, Lara…"

I ran my fingers over the grate as if I could touch her, but the holes were too small. "Are you alright? How's your ankle?"

She cringed. "It hurts," she said. "But it doesn't matter. How do we get out of here?"

I bit my lip, shaking my head. "I don't know, her men are everywhere." We watched each other for a moment. "Can you even run?"

She nodded faintly. "It still works," she said. "It just really hurts, and I'm _really_ exhausted. All my muscles are shaking. I was trying to drink from a glass before and my hands were going so much that I hit it on my teeth."

"Oh, Sam…" I ran my fingers over the grate again. If only I could carry her out of here like I'd carried her down the mountain in Yamatai.

"Lara, she's going to know when she sees the footage."

I exhaled. "I know. It's only a matter of time." I thought for a second. "How much footage did you take?"

"Including the stuff from the hotel? About twelve hours," she said. "Nearly a hundred gigs."

Something occurred to me. "How fast can you speed up playback on the actual camera? Only up to thirty-two times, I think I remember?" She nodded. "And a hundred gigs would take quite a long time to transfer to a laptop, wouldn't it?"

"Maybe fifteen minutes if she's got one of those fast card readers."

"Okay," I said, thinking. "Okay, so we've got at least fifteen minutes from when she gets to her room, which may already have happened. Hang on a second."

I crawled out from under the bed and stood in the centre of the room, looking around. There just had to be something in here I could use. As I panned my eyes around the room, they came to rest on something on the ceiling.

The smoke detector.

I had such fond memories of going to investigate people smoking in their room when I was doing room service at a hotel in London between terms. I assumed the safety standards would be reasonably uniform in the European Union, especially when it came to tourist hotspots.

I scrambled back under the bed. "Sam," I said. "I need you to help me with this. There are smoke detectors on the ceiling. If only one of them goes off, staff come to check if there's a fault or someone's smoking in their room. If more than one does, the system automatically calls the fire service and the fire alarm goes off."

"Okay," she said. "So how do I start a fire in here?"

"Break the lamp open and hold a piece of that complimentary note paper near the open wire. Be really careful to hold it a little away, though, because if you touch it the wire will break." I looked back across the floor. "Then pull a chair up to the smoke detector and hold the paper there."

Her eye disappeared from the vent. I could hear her trying to smash the globe, so I went and did the same. I'd already figured out the best way to do it from Ms. Natla's tent, so I had the paper curling into ash almost straight away. Legs a little unsteady, I climbed onto the table and held the paper under the fire alarm.

It was only a few seconds before it began to screech; it was so loud that standing so close to it was deafening. I hopped down off the table, and only a second later I could hear Sam's alarm through the wall. The fire bell started in the hallway, and the main lights blacked out leaving onto the emergency lighting.

There was shouting in the hallway. I opened the wardrobe and took out a coat hanger,and then ran over to the door and hammered on it.  
The door opened, and it was the same man before with the same gun.

I hooked the coat hanger into the gun and yanked it out of his hands.

It went clattering across the floor and I went after it. When my hands closed on it, I spun it around and shot towards where I could see a head. The man flopped against the floor. There was another man after him, silhouetted against the dim hallway lighting. He obviously couldn't see me as well as I could see him, because he hesitated and that allowed me to shoot him, too.

I looked down at the gun; it was much too quiet for a normal pistol. I'd never seen a silencer before, but I guessed the attachment on the end of the nose must be what they looked like.

I corner-checked the hallway and nearly lost my own head as a chunk of wood was blown out of the doorframe. Grabbing a pillow, I tossed it in the hallway and while they were distracted and aiming at that, I stepped out and shot them both until they fell.

Sam's door was very close to mine, so I ran out and tried the handle on it. "Sam!"

It opened. She looked terrified, but her eyes were lit with hope. I took her hand and lead her at a fast jog down the hallway towards the exit arrow sign. We didn't have the luxury of being careful with her ankle right now.

Unlike our hotel in Athens, Hotel Rex did actually seem to have a few other patrons. We'd run out of our wing into a central hallway and I nearly shot one or two of them accidentally. In the half-light it was hard to distinguish been men who were tourists and men who were working for Ms. Natla.

At the lifts, there was a group of men watching everyone who was ignoring the _In Case of Fire Do Not Use Elevators_ sign and piling into the lifts. Before they saw us, I pulled Sam into the stairwell and away from the other people trying to evacuate. There were men in the stairwell, too, but for some odd reason they were really slow to draw and I got both of them down before they hit me.

"You're a really good shot," Sam commented as we struggled with the stairs.

The thing was, I wasn't _that_ good, at least not with a pistol and especially not with how shaky my exhausted arms were. It normally took me a lot more rounds to get people down and they were normally firing just as many at me. I doubted Ms. Natla would hire amateurs, so it didn't make much sense.

The stairs only lead as far down as ground level. I listened at the door, and then pulled it open. It fed into a small alcove near reception and there were already quite a number of people running out of the building past us. When I saw Ms. Natla at the reception desk, I pushed Sam back into alcove behind me.

"I don't care about your policies," she was telling what looked like a young duty manager. "I'm telling you to turn it off immediately, there is no fire!"

The manager had a checklist in her hand and she was clearly trying to follow it. "I'm sorry, Ma'am," the girl said. "But I can't switch it off. After the alarm has started only the fire service can."

Ms. Natla took the checklist from her and threw it across the floor. "Tell me where the box is!" she demanded, advancing on the duty manager as she backed against the wall. "Just tell me where it is!"

"In the basement," the manager said, holding her hands up and looking quite confused about how angry Ms. Natla was, "But you can't open it without the key, only the fire service has the key!"

"We'll see about that," Ms. Natla said, straightening. She reached out and grabbed the jacket of a man who was passing her. "You! I thought I told you to unlock the windows." He mumbled something and she jabbed one perfectly manicured finger towards the ringing bell. "Then what's this? What is this?" When he didn't answer, she released him. "This is unbelievable. I won't have the police arriving in the middle of this. Do something about it. If there are bodies, get rid of them."

He nodded.

The lift was beside the stairwell alcove, and when Ms. Natla strode towards us with her heels clicking against the marble floor, my heart rose to my throat. She couldn't have been more than five feet away from us as we were pressed against the wall of the alcove. Behind me, Sam had her hand over her mouth trying to obscure the sound of herself panting.

I heard the lift call as it arrived at ground level, and she stepped into it. When I was one hundred per cent certain she's left, I dragged Sam across lobby and toward the conference room. Someone saw us and I heard a man shout, so I pushed the door to the lobby shut behind us and jammed the butterknife into the hinge.

It was a short run to the conference room, and inside, there was a man packing our possessions into a garbage bag. He looked up when he heard us enter, but he didn't draw his weapon. Instead, he tried to do a runner to the other door.

I didn't really know what to do since he was clearly working for Ms. Natla, so I fired until I finally downed him.

I searched his body and found a gun, cocked it and handed it to Sam. "Point this at the door and shoot anyone who opens it."

I rushed over to the table and emptied out the garbage bags, trying to stuff all out possessions and electronics into our belt bags. As I was rifling through everything, I realised that although our holsters were still on the table, someone had already removed our guns and ammo. No loss, I thought, thinking I'd prefer to keep the guns I'd taken off Ms. Natla's men, anyway.

I clipped Sam's belt-bag around her waist while she was aiming at the door, and then went to investigate whether or not it was worth taking the dead man's shoes and putting them on Sam. While I was holding the sole of the man's foot against mine for sizing, Sam shrieked and started shooting.

"Hey, hey, watch it!" It was Larson's voice. "I just had my hair done!"

She lowered the gun.

I did actually raise my own gun at him as he approached, just in case. He gave me a strange look and pushed the nose away from him, handing Sam something very small. It was dark, so I didn't know what it was until she announced it. "The memory card from my camera!"

"Sorry about leaving the camera," he said. "She'd notice too fast I'd've taken that. It was already hooked up to her laptop."

"Thanks," I said to him as Sam tucked the card in her pocket. "Are you going to give us the Scion, too?"

He shook his head. "I reckon it's not over yet," he said. "I don't know what to do with it, but giving it to the one person she's after definitely ain't the right thing to do."

I decided to defer to his wisdom on this one, considering I'd been wrong about him several times before. "Okay," I said. I stood and watched him for a moment as I tried to close the zip on my bag. "Won't she find out someone helped us?"

He shrugged, gesturing for us to follow him. "She has a pretty high opinion of you, I don't think she'll guess. She did yell something at me about stopping you leave, though, so if she ever asks you, you never saw me here." He shot me a grin. We tailed him to the door of the conference room. He gave me an appraising look and then pushed it open. "You know, I've killed quite a lot of people for her. If some other person had done the things you've done, she'd just have had me shoot you. I think she has you way up there with her damn Scion thing." Instead of his shotgun, he had a pistol in his belt just like the other men. He took it out and cocked it. "Anyone would think _you're_ the one that's going to give her those powers."

He checked the corridor, and then we kept moving. I jogged after him. "'Those powers'?"

He nodded. "I don't know all the details, and she certainly wouldn't tell me if I asked, so I keep my mouth shut. From what I've heard, that Scion thing _makes_ stuff, like, creatures. It makes them, and it keeps them alive indefinitely. I reckon you could put it in a room with someone, and they would live forever."

There was an exit sign in the corridor ahead of us. I wanted to get as much information out of him as possible before we reached it. "You think she wants to be immortal?"

He shrugged. "At the very least." He opened the door for us and checked around. Someone called to him and he waved, holding us back inside until the person had gone. "Go," he said. "The parking lot is that way." He dropped something into my hand. "Her keys. The numberplate is on the tag. It's a Silver Lexus."

I stared down at them for a moment, and then looked back up at him. I could have hugged him. "You helped us again," I said. He ruffled my hair. It was such a warm gesture and it reminded me what Pierre had said about him having a daughter. "You must be a great father."

The smile fell of his face and I saw his throat bob. It was a second before he could reply. "Too bad I'll never find out now," he said, and pulled the exit shut behind him.

There were men in the car park, but fortunately there were also a several groups of tourists chatting as they stood by their cars so our movement didn't draw much attention. I couldn't stick my head out to survey the cars, so I just kept pressing the unlock button on the keys and followed the chirps to a silver Lexus.

I climbed into it, taking my axe from my waist and giving it to Sam to hold. The car smelt like Ms. Natla, I thought. Like her, and expensive leather. Sam buckled herself in and went to search through the dash for whatever she could find in there.

The windows were tinted almost black, so no one batted an eyelid as we drove out of the car park. The driveway led to a gate and there was a group of large men blocking it. Clearly their intention was to search every car that was trying to leave. In the headlights, I counted seven.

I rolled slowly toward them.

"I hope this car has a lot of power," I told Sam, and then jammed my heel on the accelerator just as we reached them. It did, and it surged forward and slammed into at least five of them like skittles. It was a sickening feeling to drive over the bodies, but I kept my foot against the floor until the car was well out on the road. Because I was driving so fast, in my attempt to turn I hit over a sign pointing into Hotel Rex. It bounced over the bonnet and back at the men who were still standing. I put my foot to the floor again and kept it there until I couldn't hear gunfire anymore.

We were out of the town on the highway before I realized we'd made it. I wound down the window a fraction and let the wind blow on my face.

"We did it," Sam said, relaxing back into the chair. She laughed once. "Oh, my God!"

I had been smiling and imagining a warm bath and some actual sleep, trying to not think too much about the last thirty minutes when a nagging memory of Ms. Natla pushed its way into the front of my mind. What had she been saying about unlocked windows? Which windows, and why would that have prevented the fire alarm? I didn't even want to answer that question to myself, because I was afraid I knew exactly what she was talking about.

If she'd been expecting me to try and scale the side of the hotel, why did she put men all over the ground?

The more I thought about it, the more I felt extremely uneasy. I'd had a _much_ harder time in Yamatai killing the Solarii. Ms. Natla's men were hardly even shooting at me, and that one in the conference room actually didn't shoot at me at all despite the fact he was armed with a loaded weapon.

I remembered what that man with the torch had told me after he'd Tasered me: they'd been ordered to not injure us.

"Sam," I said slowly as she put her ankle on the dash and examined it. "Didn't that feel a little too easy?"

She looked at me like I was completely mad. " _No_ ," she said decisively. "That is _not_ what I would call easy. Any one of those men could have killed us."

"Except they hardly tried at all," I pointed out.

Sam abandoned her ankle to watch me, her brow half-lowered and wavering. I didn't need to spell it out for her. "You think she let us escape?"

In my gut, I knew what I felt. It was time I started trusting it. "Yes."

We were silent for a moment.

"But why would she go to all that trouble to catch us only to just let us go again?" Sam asked. "Doesn't she need you to get the rest of the Scion?"

I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel. I was so tired it was difficult to think clearly about all this, and anything that involved Ms. Natla seemed to turn into a fucking labyrinth. "I've got no idea. All I know is that woman just _plays_ people. I'm sure somehow this fits in her master plan or something." I released a breath. "She probably thinks I'll probably go get the third piece anyway, because she has the first two."

"The first two… Hey, you think that Larson…?"

I was so angry about the idea of Larson being in on this that my heart was pounding. Surely he couldn't be playing me as well, could he? He just reminded me so much of Roth sometimes, aside from all that macho-chauvinist crap he was always spouting. I didn't want to believe it, I really didn't, but he'd just so easily taken that fragment from me. I couldn't ignore how easy it had been for him.

"I don't know," I said finally. "If he is, she has two pieces and there's only one left."


	29. Chapter 29

According to the manual, the Lexus LS460 offered a range of security features as standard, including engine immobilizer, Smart Key™ technology, customisable alarms, " _And_ ," Sam read out to me, " _A state-of-the-art GPS navigation system that can be used to remotely pinpoint the location of a vehicle in the unlikely event a theft is successful._ "

If there had been any chance at all that I might have driven all the way to our hotel in Ms. Natla's Lexus, that just about settled it. "There's a town just ahead," I said. "We can find something else there."

Just outside the line of houses, I pulled over and we hopped out.

Sam took her wallet and hobbled off to try and secure us another vehicle, while I gave Ms. Natla's car the respect it deserved: a bullet hole in every panel and slashed tyres. It was immensely satisfying to destroy something that belonged to that woman, even if she probably expected me to.

As I was walking along the road into the town, I could hear the car Sam had purchased before I even saw the headlights. Or rather, headlight. She nearly hit me over with it, and had to manually wind down the windscreen to talk to me. "Not exactly a Lexus, but how much does it remind you of that old wreck you used to drive in uni?"

I let her drive since it was an auto and she didn't need her left foot for it. She told me a long, elaborate story about how she'd managed to get her hands on it, but the crux of it seemed to be that she'd staggered into a pub, waving around the wad of Euros she'd withdrawn in Lima and said she'd been carjacked and hurt her ankle. Apparently men had been lining up to help her, and, stupidly, she'd accepted help from the hottest one there who was also too young to own any sort of quality vehicle. I didn't even want to ask her how much she'd paid for it, since it didn't even feel like it was worth the metal it was made from.

I watched her as she drove.

"I was thinking I might ask Dad to get me a Lexus this year instead of the one I normally get," she was saying. "You know, assuming we don't, like, die and the world doesn't end."

Something about the way she'd phrased that unsettled me.

I leaned back into the seat, trying to determine why what she'd said made me feel so very uncomfortable. It was just so casual, I thought, such a throwaway line. It didn't have any of the weight it should have.

"We keep saying that, don't we?" I said, looking back toward her. "'If the world ends' and 'if we die'. It's sort of like we're talking about if it rains tomorrow or if Man U wins the cup."

"Well, I can turn on the radio and find some dramatic music or something," she was smiling. "No, wait, scrap that…" She pointed at the centre console. There was a huge hole where a radio should have been.

I laughed, but not for very long. "I mean it, though," I said, watching her. "Do we really think that's what's going to happen?"

She stopped joking about and thought about my question for a while before she answered. "My grandmother always used to say 'The head thinks, but the heart knows', or whatever the best translation of that is. It's like that," she said. "In my heart I know that what is about to happen is serious, but because I don't really know what it is, it's like I can't really believe it." She drew a long breath and released it slowly. "Because I can't say, 'This is how she's going to do whatever she's going to do', it's like it's not real."

I looked back toward the road ahead, watching the tail-lights of the car in front.

"That's just it," I said. "None of it feels real, not since Yamatai. I'm choosing whether or not to put myself in these extremely dangerous situations just like I'd decide whether to have one sugar or two." I thought about those centaurs, and watching them just cleanly thrust their spears completely through a human body. That could have been us, I thought. I had a brief, awfully distressing image of Sam's body being waved in the air by them. "Maybe we will end up like Pierre, after all."

We passed a sign that read _Athens 35_. Ahead of us was a blanket of lights.

"This is way too much for me right now," Sam said eventually. "I kind of already think I might be a bit crazy. I mean, my boots _turned to gold,_ and I'm just like, 'Yeah, I guess this is kind of interesting, but my ankle hurts'."

"Perhaps nearly being possessed by an ancient queen will give you bit of perspective," I said, smiling wryly across at her.

We arrived back at hotel just as dawn broke to find that our belongings actually hadn't been interfered with. It was so difficult to believe, that I actually went through every item of clothing Sam had bought for me, looking for GPS dots or bugs, or whatever I thought it was possible to use to track us.

It occurred to me that Ms. Natla might have put apps on our phones, too, so I went through those. Sam gave me an odd look when I lifted hers out of her hand while she was fiddling with it to check what she had installed. "I promise I haven't been stepping out on you," she said with a grin.

I noticed she was Googling, 'how many times would I need to get shot to die'.

I couldn't find anything dangerous on the phones, either. I wondered if that meant I was missing something.I stood in the centre of the room, looking around at all our belongings and trying to think clearly despite how very tired I was. Just in case, I pushed the table that had the telly on it against the door, and then went to see how likely it would be someone would scale the outside of the building to get to our windows.

Sam watched my efforts. "If she's just let us go, why would she be trying to catch us again?"

I drew the curtains. "Who knows what she's thinking," I said. "Better to be safe than sorry."

After I felt like I'd exhausted all my options, I flopped onto my bed and stared at the ceiling. "I wonder if she gets sick pleasure knowing that I just spent forty-five minutes making this hotel room more secure than a gaol cell when all I really want to do is sleep."

Sam was also lying on her bed. "I don't think I can sleep straight away," she said. "I'm _so_ tired, but I just keep thinking of those centaurs and what they did to Pierre. I need to relax, but we already drank all the alcohol yesterday."

"Maybe a bath?" I suggested.

"Didn't you say you wanted one?"

I waved my hand at her. "You go, it'll probably make your ankle feel better, anyway."

Sam heaved herself up and limped slowly toward the bathroom. She stood in the doorway for a few moments. Before I could ask her what she was doing, she said, "You know, we can probably both fit in it."

I should have been more excited about the prospect of being in a bath with her, but I think every drop of adrenaline and emotion in my body had already been spent. I also kept thinking I could hear people trying to get in through the door.

While Sam was running the water, I took the gun with the silencer and put it in my toiletry bag and then quickly hosed myself down in the shower. Sam was only wearing a towel as she sat on the edge of the bath, and it was only a hotel towel. I sprayed her with the shower hose.

She looked slowly back at me, her hair plastered all over her face. "I'd totally get you if my ankle wasn't wrecked," she said, and then turned the taps off. Squirting the complementary bath gel in, she frisked the surface of the water until there was foam.

I tried to help her into the bath, but she wouldn't accept my help and got in by herself, tossing the towel toward the shower once she was in. I got in after her on the other end. Our knees met in the middle, and we needed to shift about a bit until we both fit properly. Sam's swollen ankle ended up near my head on the rim. It was turning a deep shade of purple. I'd need to strap it later, I thought, as I lay back.

There was just something about warm water. I exhaled at length and leant my head against the tiles. If I was by myself and could have stretched out, I would have put my ears under the water and just listened to my heart beat.

When I opened my eyes again, Sam was watching me. I smiled at her and she smiled back.

"Can we just stay here? Fuck the world."

"Afraid not," I said. "The water will get cold eventually."

"Might as well get out and save the world, then, I guess," she said, grinning lazily at me. She was absolutely knackered but she still looked so beautiful. She touched my hand on the rim of the tub. "I like that look," she said quietly.

"Well, it's all yours," I said.

Her smile faded a little, and I felt uncomfortable again, wondering if I'd once again managed to say a little too much. I'd been on the wrong track, though, because she eventually said, "You know she totally expects us to go and get the third fragment."

I was relieved her discomfort wasn't anything to do with me. "Yes, I know. It's probably why she let us go."

"But you're going to get it anyway."

I thought about the fact that right now, Ms. Natla was probably holding two pieces of the Scion. Even if she wasn't, how long would it be before she was? We didn't even know how much of the file she'd copied from Sam's memory card. And Larson? I just had _no idea_ about him and whose side he was on.

"Yeah," I said. "If someone's going to get it, it should be someone who knows to at least try and keep it away from her."

Sam didn't look too excited about the prospect, and I knew why. We hadn't done a very good job at keeping the fragments away from her so far.

"Third time lucky, right?" Sam said, leaning her head back against the tub. "I hope the next piece is in, like, Hawaii or something."

I had pleasant thoughts about her in a bikini, but then needed to remind myself that it was rather pointless to imagine her _in_ clothes when she was lying in the same bath as me _without_ them. I was too tired to have any sort of reaction to her bare shoulders or the fact most of one of her legs was next to _my_ bare shoulders. While I was looking at her legs, I noticed her knees were basically two big bruises and I remembered her banging them repeatedly on the slippery walls in the cistern. The only thing I'd ever seen her do which was even comparably athletic was climbing up onto dance podiums when we were clubbing.

"You came with me," I said.

She didn't even open her eyes. "Hmm?"

"You told Roth something about us being crazy to want to go out and roll in the dirt."

She grinned. "Guess I realised that if I want to always be around you, I'm going to have to learn to hate it less." She paused. "By the way, I'm totally not there yet."

I laughed, and she flicked a patch of water towards me with a hand.

It was so peaceful being here with her, like this. No matter where we were or what was happening, she always made me feel better. I could almost forget everything outside this room, and everything that had just happened to us. We were alive and we were safe, and that's what mattered.

I had a thought that falling asleep in the bath probably wasn't a good idea, but I was quite sure it wasn't the stupidest decision I'd made about my own safety in the last four days. Besides, being so comfortable had stopped the constant flow of recent events through my head. It was enough to just lie back and listen to the sound of the tap dripping between us in the water.

As they always did these days, my dream started off with something about Yamatai – I think I was swimming around in one of the rivers on the side of the mountain, looking for something I'd dropped in the water. Before I could complete that part of my dream, though, the whole presence of the dream – the events, the atmosphere, the place – all shifted.

I was standing where Sam and I had been at the path to Tihocan's tomb. This time, Sam was beside me. We acknowledged each other – she was wearing the ritual dress. As I looked back at the tomb, she actually started walking toward it, leading me.

Inside, there was a man lying on a slab of rock like a ritual stone, dressed in the full regalia I'd seen in my first dream about the Scion. He looked young, not even in his forties, with blonde hair fanning around his head where he lay. He didn't look like he was dying, but I guessed this was Tihocan.

Over him, Qualopec was bent, holding his hand. Firelight from wall-mounted torches crackled around them.

Sam took _my_ hand and squeezed the life out of it.

"Perhaps she was right," Tihocan said in whatever language they spoke. "Look at where we've been driven: this is no Atlantis."

Qualopec didn't speak at first, and I got the sense that he was a deeply considered man in his time. "Perhaps the Higher Gods are testing us," he said at last. "I can't believe that this is the end for Atlantis. They would not allow it."

A silence stretched between them. It was Tihocan who spoke first. "I understand the wisdom of restraint, but perhaps we would not have been given the Heart if not to use it to defend our fair city." He looked back upward, peaceful resignation on his face. "Well, it's too late for us to ask ourselves this now. Go ahead."

Qualopec pushed himself to stand, his enormous insect-like legs heaving his body from beside Tihocan. He moved over toward the far wall, lifting a torch from it and returning to the stone slab. "If she were right or not, we may never know." He bent down slowly and kissed Tihocan's forehead, stroking his fingertips along the other man's face with such deep affection and deep sorrow that it made _me_ feel for them. Tihocan kissed his hand and then put his own arms by his side.

"Farewell, dear brother," Qualopec said. "May the Gods spare our beautiful city, and may we spend eternity together in it."

With that, he held the torch against the man's body.

The fire spread faster than flame should, spilling across the table like liquid and eating into the fabric of Tihocan's gown. As it twisted and melted his flesh, he didn't writhe, or cry out or move at all. He just closed his eyes and let it consume him, as if he were exhausted and falling deeply asleep at last.

Qualopec stood watching him until he was nothing more than a charred skeleton. When the last of the flames died from the table, he reached out just as he had before and touched the skull where Tihocan's face had been.

It was a long time before Qualopec moved again, but when he did, he walked slowly over to where a gold mask had been laid, and returned to place it over Tihocan's face. It had been made in his likeness, and it was smiling.

It was my own shivering that eventually woke me up. The water was tepid; I had no idea how long I'd been asleep for. Sam was still asleep across from me. She looked so peaceful and so at rest, just as Tihocan had been. I felt my throat constrict at the thought of having to do to her what Qualopec did to Tihocan. I'd sooner have turned that torch on myself.

I let the water out and slowly pulled myself out of the bath. Every muscle in my body was _so_ sore and stiff that I felt at least eighty years old.

While the rest of the water was draining, I dried myself off and wrapped the towel around my middle. I didn't want to wake Sam because she just looked so tranquil, but I couldn't really just leave her there to freeze.

"Sam?" I gently shook her. She groaned and then looked as if she was going to try and turn over. When she couldn't, she opened her eyes and seemed to realise she was still in the bath.

"You let the water out," she murmured.

I had done, and now I had a lovely view of my naked and sleepy best friend. She was just so sweet, I wanted to hug her against me. Instead, I ruined it for myself by dropping a clean towel on her. "Here. Let's go to bed."

I was already dressed and snuggled in my bed when she crawled in behind me. I hadn't really expected her to because it was twin share and the beds were single. I supposed it made sense, though: they were bigger than the ones in hospital. I felt her breasts against my back as she settled against me.

"Want me to strap your ankle?" I asked her, my face half-buried in the pillow. I sort of wanted her to say no so I didn't need to move.

"Did it myself," she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. "It's not rocket science."

That made me smile.

I'd been so worried about her coming with me, and against every set of odds everything had turned out alright. Maybe the 'Higher Gods' were smiling on us, I thought, thinking of what Qualopec had been saying in my dream. My father certainly would have suggested something of that nature. He was always so comfortable with the idea that supernatural forces could be so involved with managing events. It made me feel uneasy to think that I might not be in control of what happened to me, though, so I decided not to think any more about it.

Thinking more about that ritual in the dream made me remember that Sam had been wearing her ritual dress in it, every detail exactly the same as I remembered as if she were really there. If she'd been with me in the dream, I thought, surely she couldn't have been _with_ me there…?

"Sam," I asked her, not sure how to broach the question. "What were you dreaming about in the bath?"

For a moment, she didn't answer and I thought she'd already fallen asleep again. "Why, was I talking again? I told you to wake me up if I do that."

"Just wondering."

She made a straining noise, as if she was trying to remembering. "I don't know, something about Yamatai, I guess. Why?"

I was a little disappointed. It had just felt so real, I had been sure she was there. "Never mind." Her silence prompted me to continue. "I just had a dream with you in it and I kind of thought, I don't know, that you might have had it, too."

She chuckled once. "Oh, yeah? Was I good?"

I gently elbowed her, but I found it heartening that that was the first thought that popped into her head. "I'm going back to sleep," I told her.

"Good, my dream self can finish you off," she mumbled. "My hands are hurting _way_ too much to do reality any justice."

I laughed, leaning heavily into the pillow and feeling one of her sore hands resting on my waist. She was just hopeless.

I had wondered if I would have any more dreams about Atlantis, but if I dreamt any more that morning, I didn't remember it.

I woke up with the mid-afternoon sunlight on my face, feeling refreshed – at least until I tried to move anything. If we were going to continue, we'd need to load up on painkillers.

Sam was still asleep, and that seemed like a good enough reason to turn over and doze for a while. I was busy trying very hard not to think at all about any of the things that happened to us yesterday, when a loud buzz startled me.

I sat bolt upright, accidentally waking Sam. The buzz sounded again, and I looked at our iPhones which were both still. It didn't sound like either of them, anyway. It was a much coarser sound.

Ignoring my aching limbs, I crawled out of bed and went hunting through our belongings for the buzzing, imagining a bomb, or some sort of homing device, or anything else that might be horribly dangerous.

In the end, my hand closed over something that was vibrating in my belt bag, and I pulled it out to look at what it was.

It was Pierre's Satellite phone, and it was ringing.


	30. Chapter 30

"Aren't you going to answer it?" Sam asked me as we both stared at the ringing phone.

"The number's withheld," I told her. "And I'm sure Ms. Natla has Pierre's number, because she recognised his phone."

The phone rang out, falling still in my hands. As soon as it stopped, I regretted not answering it, even if it _had_ been her. Not knowing was much worse.

"What if it's his wife, though?" I asked aloud. "What do I possibly say to her? It's not like I can tell her what happened to her husband." I made a face."On the other hand, what if something like this happened to my parents? Maybe I _should_ tell her."

"You can't tell her yet, anyway," Sam said. "Because Ms. Natla might try to use her to catch Pierre and then she could find out you lied about who has the Scion fragment."

I sat back on the floor against the other bed, still holding the phone. "No…" I said. "As much as I really hate to admit it, I think if Ms. Natla didn't know exactly where the Scion fragment was, she wouldn't have let us go."

"Or maybe she released us thinking that we would lead her to Pierre?" Sam lay back in bed, and pulled the pillow over her face for a moment. "God, I've only just woken up and already I have a headache. Please tell me there's a pharmacy around here somewhere that sells really strong drugs."

I was still stuck on the idea that Larson had been playing me all along, just like his boss had. There had to be a reason he was her right-hand man other the fact he was ex-marine, because probably half of her ground staff had similar credentials. Being able to really work people seemed like the sort of attribute that woman would value. I'd always been so hard on Sam for not being able to read people, and now it seemed I had the same problem. He'd just been so _nice_ , though. "I think he _was_ playing me," I decided. "Otherwise why would Ms. Natla have wanted him to do all that checking up on us in Japan?"

Sam peeked out from under the pillow. "Apart from that whole fake sexist thing he does, he's kind of nice, though," she said, echoing my thoughts. "Can someone be genuinely that friendly and yet also be totally using you?"

I shook my head. I had no idea.

The phone buzzed twice, and a note appeared on the screen saying there was a voicemail. Well, at least that was non-confrontational. I dialed his voicemail and put it to my ear.

"It's Saeed, wondering where the hell you are, we can't wait around here all fucking day for you to be fashionably late. If you don't arrive here or call in the next ten minutes I don't care how much you paid me, I'm not taking you." The voice sounded like it belonged to a middle-aged man whose first language wasn't English. From the name he'd given it wasn't difficult to piece together that his first language might be Arabic.

I played the voicemail to Sam. "Taking him where, you think?" she said.

"I'd put money on it being something to do with the third fragment," I said. I tabbed through the contacts on his phone and didn't find any that looked remotely Arabic or anything like 'Saeed'. His wallet was in the belt-bag on the floor beside me, so I took that out and leafed through it.

There was a headshot of his wife, which looked like it might have been an extra photo from a series taken for a passport. I examined it; she was nothing particularly special, but there was something pretty about her. She did look quite a lot younger than he did, though. There was probably a good ten year age gap. I handed it to Sam to have a look at.

While I was sorting through his money, a post-it with a mobile number on it fell out. There was nothing else written on it. Bracing myself in case it was Ms. Natla's number or some other number I really didn't want to be calling, I punched it into the phone.

Sam crossed her fingers for me.

"It's about fucking time," the voice answered – it was the same man who'd identified himself as Saeed on the voicemail. "Where the fuck are you?"

I smiled, despite the fact I was being sworn at. "Eh, Hi," I said. "I know you were expecting Pierre."

Sam's face brightened. She mouthed, "Yes!"

He paused, clearly taken aback by hearing a female voice. His language cleared right up after that. "Who are you? His wife?"

Well, it was good enough cover, I supposed, so I didn't contradict him. "Pierre can't make it, but my friend and I want to come instead since he paid so much. Can that be arranged?"

He was holding the phone away from his face and talking to someone else. "There's stairs everywhere on board," he said when he put the phone back against his ear. "So your friend better be able to carry you around, because we won't be."

That made absolutely _no_ sense to me whatsoever, but since I didn't want to have any sort of conversation about why Pierre wasn't coming, I just said. "It's fine. Where exactly are you meeting us? Pierre was vague on the details."

"Glifada mooring. There'll probably be only one trawler. You've got an hour."

Sam was already getting directions on her mobile before he even finished the sentence. She showed the results to me. It was a reasonably short drive, depending on traffic.

"No problem," I said. "We'll be there soon."

We actually made it to Glifada in about forty-five minutes, and that was including the time Sam spent buying new shoes and in a pharmacy trying to explain how much pain she was in. In the end she'd just shown the pharmacist my nearly healed stomach wound.

The pharmacist had rolled his eyes and given us two packets of something that made no sense except for the word 'codeine', and then said to both of us, "No alcohol with these. You understand?"

Understanding wasn't the problem, I thought, as looked sternly at Sam. Hopefully the circumstances would prevent her from trying alcohol with them just to see what happened.

While we were driving through the shopping strip, Sam also made me drop her past an electrical store so she could pick up _another_ camera. As much as I was completely over the problems being filmed had caused, her camera had probably saved our lives in Tihocan's tomb and I couldn't discount its usefulness. She hadn't been able to buy the previous model, though, and had instead opted for a much hardier version that was shockproof and waterproof. To demonstrate this, she dropped it on the ground and kicked it across the footpath.

Watching her limping after it was the funniest part of the display. "Pity you don't come in a shock-proof model," I called out of the car window at her.

The mooring was at the end of a long grey beach, and Saeed had been right, there was only one trawler. The rest of the boats were small yachts or other leisure crafts and it was the wrong season for people to be using them. That also meant there weren't many people around it, which was both a relief and a concern. We abandoned the old wreck in the car park near the jetty and carried our bags along the jetty.

With the codeine, Sam wasn't doing so badly on her ankle and I kept forgetting to walk slowly for her. At least, I assumed it was her ankle: I had told her not to film the crew on the trawler, so I couldn't be completely certain she wasn't dragging her feet and sulking because of that, instead.

Saeed was leaning against the railing, watching us approach the end of the jetty. He had a frown on his face and with his heavy black brow it made him seem very angry.

I unzipped my pullover a little in case I needed to draw my gun from the holster.

He didn't move as we walked across the ramp onto the deck. "You're his wife?"

I didn't want to answer directly. "You were expecting someone else?"

He looked me up and down. "Hah," he said. "Your husband is a lying bastard. Did you know he's been telling us you're a cripple?"

I winced, thinking that didn't really sound like the language someone would use to describe their wife. I wondered how much liberty had been taken with the expression. To his question, I shrugged. "I'm sure he's only told you what he thinks he needs to."

Saeed smirked. "That would be right." He shook his head. "Two young women on board," he looked over his shoulder at us as he walked towards the head of the trawler. "You're lucky everyone's afraid of him."

No, I thought, with that sort of opinion of women, _you're_ all lucky I don't know how to captain a trawler.

There were a few men about as we were shown below deck to a small cabin. According to Saeed the trip would be about ten or twelve hours, and there was a slim possibility we might be boarded by the port authority. He showed us where to hide if that happened. Otherwise, where possible, we were to remain in the cabin. It was good to finally get some specifics about where Pierre had been going: the trawler was dropping us off in Alexandria, Egypt. From there, a man was waiting to take us to Abu Simbel in Nubia.

One of the other men gave me a strange look as we passed, as if he recognized my face. I hoped that if he _did_ recognise Lara Croft, he wouldn't tell anyone.

The journey couldn't have been more tedious. Only ten minutes after the trawler left, reception dropped out, which meant we were stuck in a tiny room with nothing to do. Every few minutes footsteps would pass by the cabin and I kept expecting someone burst inside and try something with us. It didn't happen, but the atmosphere on the boat wasn't one that suggested we were particularly safe.

The eternal optimist, Sam plugged in her camera to change, swallowed another two or three codeine and slept for a while. I just sat on the floor, worrying about whether or not we'd made the right decision to get on this boat full of strange men and continue looking for the third fragment. Any one of them could decide to check in on us at any point, and Sam was basically unconscious. I wondered if I shot someone with the silencer if I could hide their body where Saeed had shown us to hide and not get caught until we were well away. I just hoped all the men would keep their hands to themselves so I didn't have to find out.

All of that worrying about the crew reminded me of Larson's ruse to get the Scion fragment, and the fact he'd been 'pretending' to feel me up to get access to my pockets. Ugh, I thought, I wanted to be angry about it except that at no point had it actually _felt_ lecherous. I didn't feel at all unsafe around him, which only made him even more dangerous, in my mind. He'd lulled me into such a false sense of security, at least on this boat I knew not to feel safe.

When the trawler docked in Alexandria, it was a relief to finally alight. Saeed didn't accept my offer to shake hands, just telling me, "Call us when you want to go back. If it's more than three days it's another twenty grand."

I raised my eyebrows. "I'll keep that in mind," I said. Twenty thousand was stretching it, even for Sam. She'd probably have to ask her father to advance her if we needed that sort of money.

The man Pierre had hired to take him to Aswan didn't speak any English, which saved us the hassle of having to try and invent reasons why I wasn't Pierre. Saeed said a few things to him and then we climbed in the back of his four wheel drive for another horribly long and dusty trip.

On our arrival in Aswan, we spent all of Pierre's US dollars on baksheesh for the driver. I'd forgotten in Egypt you needed to pay for everything twice.

Abu Simbel looked much the same as it had when Sam and I had visited it three years ago; still a breath-taking example of Egyptian technology and still filled with hordes and hordes of tourists.

We paid our entry and spent a good couple of hours toting around our bags and exploring every single inch inside and outside of the temples. In the end, we came to nothing. There didn't seem to be any entrance to anywhere. Tourists were already piling on the buses and we were no closer to finding anything that might suggest the sort of underground caverns that the other two fragments had been hidden in.

"I wonder if Pierre was wrong?" Sam asked as we edged around the side of the temples to avoid being removed from the site by Egyptian tourism monitors as night fell.

"Well, he knew exactly where the other site was, and seemed to know a lot more about it than I did." I thought perhaps he may have had geological isopachs or some other information I didn't. Whatever it may have been, though, it wasn't on his old satellite phone, because I'd gone all the way through it while Sam was asleep on the trawler.

"So what do we do now?" Sam asked, swinging her small camera around and pointing it at me again.

To be honest, I had no idea. I had been hoping something would occur to me once we arrived, but I'd come to nothing. I led Sam back inside the main temple again, taking her torch from her and switching it on. We wandered around inside.

The moonlight was streaming through the special cuts into the front of the temple and falling on everything except the statue of Ptah. I shined the torch on his face. Creator of all, I thought, master architect and lord of truth. "Where did you hide our Scion?" I asked him, as if he could reply.

Pierre's phone buzzed in my belt bag.

I took it out, thinking it was ringing, but it wasn't. In fact, there was nothing on the screen at all, nothing to indicate why it had vibrated.

That made my heart pound.

Sam looked across at me over the LCD screen. "Who is it?" she asked.

I looked back up at the statue. Ptah was motionless in my torchlight, still made of stone and still just a statue. Still, it was unnerving. "I think it's him," I said to Sam, half-joking, and showed her and the camera the empty screen.

She clearly didn't think it was a joke and looked thoroughly spooked. "That's really creepy," she said. "What does he want you to do with it?"

I unlocked the phone, sitting on Ptah's feet. There were no other hints, nothing else that suggested to me that some old Egyptian god wanted me to do anything. I wondered if it had just been a coincidence that the phone had buzzed at that moment.

"Do you think there's something about that statue himself?" Sam asked as she sat down next to me, switching on the forward light to film my deliberating. Our knees were touching. "Like, what's he the God of?"

"Architects, engineers and craftsman," I said automatically. "Volcanoes and lava, too, although I don't know how that's relevant – it's some sort of link to the Underworld. I think we're doing this for nothing, though."

"Maybe there's someone on the phone who knows if those things are relevant?"

I made a noise. "Well, there is, but I don't much want to call her."

Sam hesitated. "Ms. Natla?"

I stared at the contact entry for her. "Yeah." I let a silence stretch between us as I thought about our options. "She probably already knows we're here, anyway, since it's the last place left to go." The more I thought about it, the more I realized there wasn't much choice. I didn't have Ms. Natla's iPad, Pierre certainly wasn't going to answer any questions and I could find nothing on this site that would lead me to caverns without hiring the equipment to properly explore it. "Well, either I call her or we just wait around for her and her ground staff to show up with all their weapons."

All I could see of Sam was the light from the camera. "How can we be sure she knows where it is?"

That, I had no doubt about. "She knew exactly where we would be in St. Francis' Folly even after I turned the GPS off. The coordinates for Qualopec's tomb were the access code on her iPad."

I could hear Sam exhale. "I really hate that woman," she said, sounding resigned. "You have no idea."

I didn't blame her, not after she'd had five men unceremoniously strip her to her underwear. I could still remember seeing Sam wiping silent tears from her face; it made my skin prickle. "Not more than I do," I promised her. "But I think we're out of options, and all this cat and mouse can't possibly be worse than whatever she has to say when she's a thousand miles away."

Just in case we had any other avenues we hadn't explored, I sat and tried to think. I even went through Pierre's wallet again and ended up with no alternatives.

"That's it," I said eventually. "I'm just going to call her."

I looked back towards the phone. Before I could second guess myself, I selected her contact and held the phone against my ear.

It hardly rang even once. "What took you so long?" I could hear the smile in Ms. Natla's voice.

I closed my eyes. God, I hated her _so_ much. Of course she knew I'd ring. "Traffic," I said.

"Yes, I imagine the traffic on the backroads of Aswan is just terrible at this time of day," she said, not missing a beat, and correctly guessing that I'd already left the country. "You were just playing hard to get, weren't you? But, Lara," she said, turning that sinuous tone on me. "I always get them."

The worst part was that I couldn't contradict her because she sort of _had_ got me: I'd called her when she'd wanted me to.

It was quiet enough in the temple that Sam could hear her, too. She made a disgusted noise and looked like she was going to pry the phone from my hands and throw it across the temple floor.

"You're not going to get me," I told her. "But I'm going to get the last fragment. Where's the entrance?"

She laughed once, like she was honestly amused. "You're not in the actual temple, are you? You really should have gone to Cambridge if they didn't teach you the history of Abu Simbel at UCL."

I squinted, trying to figure out what she meant. Abu Simbel was commissioned by Pharoah Ramesses II after the battle of Kardesh for himself and his queen… which… needed to be moved by engineers in the sixties for the construction of the Lake Nasser dam. I could have _beaten my_ _head_ against the wall, how could that _not_ have occurred to me earlier?

"The original site," I said, hating myself for looking so stupid in front of her.

"Smart girl," she said a little sarcastically. "I hope you brought your bathing suit." I was about to hang up on her, when she said. "So, are you going to meet me in Croatia after all for the grand opening?"

"Does it matter? You're going to try and ambush me here," I said.

She chuckled, never for a second sounding anything but perfectly calm and professional. "I have two fragments in my hand right now. I don't 'try' at anything."

"You're lying."

"Larson does what he's told, Lara," she said. "He learnt a long time ago that everything is just much easier that way."

My jaw dropped. She _did_ know, and he _was_ in on it. I clenched the fabric on my knees with my fists. Well, he wasn't getting the last piece, that's for sure. I hoped she would send him, anyway, so I could show him exactly what I thought of him. He had totally and completely had me fooled – Pierre had been right about him all along.

I did hang up on her, then. I was too angry to say anything, and far too close to throwing the phone on the ground and shooting it. I may actually have done it, except that I only had a limited number of bullets left and I didn't want to waste them on a phone.

Sam had the camera pointed at the ground, and the light reflecting from the stone allowed me to see that she making a face. "I guess that answers the question," she said. "You can be a nice guy and still have no problems totally screwing a girl over." She laughed once. "Stick to girls, Lara."

I was distracted by my anger at Larson, and found myself saying, "As long as you stay female." I clamped my mouth shut over the end of it as I realised what I was saying.

Sam's expression faded again, and I can only imagine mine did, too, because she blushed. When she spoke again, she had managed a grin. "Wow, you…" she sounded like she was forcing it. "You really hit the ball back these days!"

"I've been working on my backhand," I said, completely forgetting Larson and miming a volley before I realised what the gesture looked like.

She looked like a bird that had had its feathers ruffled. I'd completely undone her.

"I'm sorry," I said, throwing my hands up. "Sam, I didn't mean to make things awkward again, I—"

"No—" she interrupted me, and then took a settling breath. "No, it's okay, I like it." She wasn't making eye contact with me when she spoke, but afterwards she looked up at me from under her lashes and gave me a little smile.

She liked it? I was completely flirting with her. God, did that mean…? And that look she was giving me, I didn't care who'd betrayed me or what fragment I was looking for, I wanted that look. I needed to not want it right now, though, because we had work to do.

"We need to…" I waved my hand towards the outside of the temple, a little breathless. She nodded, and we walked out of the temple. "The entrance will be under water. You sure you're okay to come?" I looked at her ankle. Even if she wasn't fine, I doubt she'd have refused, anyway, and I was right. She nodded.

Sam managed to compose herself as we walked towards the lake. "At least the water will be warm," she said, taking off her jacket. "We just leave our bags here, I guess?"

"Somehow I don't think you'd mind the excuse to go clothes shopping again if they get stolen," I said, grinning at her.

"Well, it _is_ kind of fun to dress you," she conceded. She'd always complained I'd wear boring clothes if she didn't infiltrate my wardrobe.

A witty reply to that was on my lips, and I decided at the last minute to just let it out. "It's even more fun to _undress_ me." Her lips parted. Since I needed to take it off anyway, I unzipped it very slowly, eyes locked with hers.

When I shrugged it off, before it so much as hit the sand she was on me with her arms tightly around my neck and her body pressed against mine. She was pushing me back into sand with my pullover as she kissed me and I felt her tongue skim the underside of my lips. Before I knew it, my head was half-buried in loose sand and my best friend was straddled across my hips with a handful of my breasts.

Neither of us was drunk, and I had no idea where the camera was but was acutely aware of where both her hands were. It wasn't what was in either of them.

She kissed across my jaw and down my neck, stopping at my ear to whisper, "I want you so much."

So suddenly being given everything I'd dreamed of, I was a heartbeat away from undoing my trousers and letting her into them at that second. The gun jutting between us was a keen reminder of the fact we were actually on probably quite a limited time frame before Ms. Natla showed up and made quite a reasonable attempt to kill us. We'd have exhausted our usefulness if she had the third fragment.

"Not now," I said, pushing her up. "Later, but not now."

She tried to steal a few more kisses from me before I managed to push her off. Looking incredibly flustered, she pulled down her top and brushed the sand from her knees. Her cheeks were flushed, and I had butterflies in my stomach at the thought that _I'd_ caused that.

"Did you really say 'later'?" she asked me as I brushed all the sand off myself, and I nodded. She smiled. "God, how will I concentrate?"

With those beautiful lips still parted as she breathed through her mouth, I was wondering the same thing. "Let's not end up like Pierre," I said. It was a truly sobering thought.

After I'd wrapped our phones and purses up, we waded into the water.

"How far down is it?" she asked me, trying to get back to business and flipping the camera open again as we entered.

The current wasn't strong, but I couldn't ignore it. "I don't know," I said. "But if it were easy to find, some tourist would have accidentally found it by now."

The water was dark, and the ground fell out quite quickly from beneath us. I hooked the axe into what was left of it on the shore so we wouldn't be washed away. Sam had grabbed my hand, and gave me the video camera. "It's in night mode," she said. "And it's _actually_ water proof."

We made eye contact again as I accepted it, and both blushed. I had to laugh at the timing of it as we picked out way around the shoreline looking for the old temple site. We couldn't have been at this stage while we were in back in Japan or, better yet, in a hotel room somewhere? I just wanted to celebrate the fact I was allowed to touch Sam by finally doing at lot of it. The waiting was going to be torture, but made me even more desperate to make sure Ms. Natla didn't manage to catch us afterward.

We'd nearly done the whole coastline when I swung my axe to hook in the sand and it bounced off solid rock. I put the lens under the water, watching the LCD screen as I brushed debris off whatever I'd found. It was a doorway carved with ancient hieroglyphs that had been half-blasted away by the new water level.

"Third time lucky," I said, repeating what Sam had said earlier as I put my boot firmly against the rock and pushed it in.


	31. Chapter 31

The entrance was underwater, and it sloped very steeply downward.

"Can you see the end?" Sam asked as I surfaced from pointing the camera down the corridor in the stone.

I reviewed the footage. "No, I'm going to just have to go in and see how deep it is."

Sam crossed her arms nervously. "If we still had the rope, you could tie it to yourself and give me one end… that way if it was too deep I could pull you out and try and revive you."

That wasn't a bad idea, actually. I was impressed, even if we didn't have any rope to try it. "I'm not too keen on the idea of drowning, so maybe it's for the best there's no rope. I won't be tempted to try anything too stupid." I took a few deep breaths. "Wish me luck."

The corridor was deep, and it turned out that it wasn't the length and the lack of air that was the problem. I hadn't swum very far down it before I could really feel the pressure of the water on my ears, and my back kept floating upwards and scraping roof. It was difficult, but there wasn't really very much room to turn around and swim back, so I kept going.

With the camera, I could see the corridor opened out into a chamber. It was a relief to let myself float to the surface.

I was filling my lungs again when I felt the water move around me. I shrieked, kicking away from whatever it was and trying to quickly pull the axe out of my belt.

Instead of a crocodile, it was actually Sam who surfaced next to me, spluttered, gasping and waving her torch around. When she managed to regain her breath she splashed me in the face. "You kicked me!"

"I thought you were a crocodile! You're lucky I didn't brain you with my axe!" God, that was too close, I thought. I wondered if I'd have actually done it. "Why didn't you tell me you were going to follow straight after me?"

"I didn't know I was going to," she said, sounding a little put out. "It was really weird just standing there and wondering if you'd make it or not." She took another breath. "What if I'd been there all night staring at that door in the rock and you'd never come back?"

With the forward light on her, I could see her expression and it made my heart melt. I shouldn't have found it so surprising that she was worried about my well-being after all these years, but I did. It was nice to see evidence that someone cared about me enough to take the risk she just had, even if I completely didn't approve of her putting her life in danger for me.

She was squinting against the light to see me, and she must have been able to because she smiled. "Stop with that look," she said. "Work to do, remember?"

That made me blush. It hadn't been _that_ sort of look, had it?

I had thought we might find somewhere to climb out of the water in the cavern, but we didn't. In fact, the opposite was true. This whole room would have once been empty – before the creation of the dam. As a result the way forward seemed to be through a tunnel cut in the floor with stairs along the bottom of it. Just the entrance was a good four metres beneath us.

"How long can you hold your breath?" I asked Sam as I treaded water over the passageway.

She still had a hand on the wall of the cavern. "We're about to find out, aren't we?"

"Just try to relax," I told her, and then dived under. The passageway was wider than the entrance, but after the few initial stairs seemed basically level. There was light coming from the end of it and as I swam toward it, I could see stairs leading upward.

The hieroglyphs on the walls were fascinating and I really wanted to examine them, but I didn't have the lung capacity to. Instead, I filmed them as I swam along the corridor, thinking I could review the footage later.

When I reached the far end I was already desperate for breath, but the surface of the water wasn't visible above me. I kept swimming upwards with my lungs burning until _finally_ I surfaced and was able to breathe again.

As I inhaled deeply, I took aspect of the great hall I was in.

The light had been caused by ceiling-mounted braziers burning with the same ethereal fire as had been in Tihocan's tomb. There was a supporting column beside where I'd surfaced, and it was smooth white marble and painted all around with scenes from some sort of story. I ran my fingers along it, feeling the different textures of the paint and sad that the water would eventually ruin them. I was examining the story when I came across a picture that represented the Pharaoh and his wife, and that made me remember Sam.

I had no idea how long she had taken to follow me, so I had no idea whether or not I should be worried.

The water was as clear as polished glass. I could see everything below, but I couldn't see Sam.

I dove under the water again, back down to the entrance of the passage way. Sam was close to it, and I could see on her face that she was _struggling_. She had her hand clamped over her mouth and her eyes were pleading with me. I took her other hand and dragged her into the half-submerged hall, powering back to the surface of the water.

She burst into the air, gasping and clutching at her throat. I lead her over to out of the columns, but instead of leaning against it, she was clutching onto me. Her eyes were watering with how much she needed to breathe. I put an arm around her as she coughed, anchoring our shoulders above the water level by hooking my fingers into a crack in the marble.

When her breathing returned to normal, she already had her chin on my shoulder. "I really hope we don't have to go back that way again." She must have looked up at that point, though, because it distracted her and the next thing she said was, "Wow…"

I looked around us. "Yeah, isn't it beautiful in here? These fragments are always hidden in such beautiful places."

She had been clutching fistfuls of my t-shirt near my collar but her hands dipped as she released me, brushing where my nipples were over the wet fabric. She hadn't intended to do it, but both of us noticed that it had happened. She leaned her face toward me. "Just a quick one," she said. "Because if I drown the next time we have to swim, I want to die remembering what this feels like."

"I should say no so you _don't_ think it's okay to drown!" I told her, but let her kiss me anyway. She parted my lips with hers and I wanted to focus on that feeling, but with the warm water and the fabric of my t-shirt swirling around me there were too many sensations. I briefly imagined kicking my shoes and pants off and pulling off my t-shirt. It would be such a liberating feeling swimming naked with our wet skin pressed together.

"I thought you said a quick one," I whispered in her ear as she pulled away and kissed down my neck. As if I was going to stop her: I'd been wanting this so much, and was a minute or two really going to affect our survivability?

"What if I do drown, though?" she asked me, or rather, asked my neck when she stopped kissing it. "I finally get to have this, and then I die."

"'Finally'?"

She sighed. "You really don't want me to elaborate, trust me."

I wasn't sure she actually needed to for me to join the dots, and it made the butterflies return to my stomach in force. It was a pleasant thought, that she'd wanted this for some time. I decided to let her have some privacy on the issue, though, and answer her first question. "You can't think like that or it all gets too much," I said, remembering when I'd discovered how to avoid panicking on Yamatai. "You just focus on the immediate stuff: getting from one platform to another, killing this guy and then that one."

She shook her head, not sounding convinced. I suspected she was probably rattled by nearly drowning again as she continued. "Or what if _you_ died and I had to do this Scion stuff all by myself? I really _want_ to be like you, but I have to be honest with myself. I totally grew up being spoon-fed." As if to illustrate her point, she said, "Like, I _hate_ camping, and that's just camping!"

This was similar to a conversation I'd had with Roth, once. He had been certain I would be able to conquer Yamatai, and he'd turned out to be right. My life hadn't been quite as smooth as Sam's, but I wasn't far off it. I'd come good, in the end. When I'd needed to. "I think Pierre had a point," I said. "He said something like, 'anyone can be anything, with the right motivation'. I think that's it." I wasn't sure that was the exact quote, but it suited my purposes for it to be the right quote now. "Let's hope if happens to me, you have the right motivation to continue."

"Let's just hope it doesn't happen, period," Sam said, touching my cheek with her palm. I kissed it.

Unhooking the camera from my belt, I gave it to her as we parted. "Come on. Let's find a way forward?"

She nodded, and paddled after me as I moved through the hall.

The far end was a huge image of Anubis, gatekeeper of the Underworld. The part of it that extended above the water level was so perfectly preserved that even the gold leafing and gold paint remained on the wall. I swam up close to it and could see individual brushstrokes. I made Sam come over and film the detail.

"That's just amazing," I said, touching the gold leaf with my fingertips and then looking up the wall. "From this, I'd say they were painted yesterday, but that can't be possible."

Sam had panned around to film the ethereal torches. "Well, _they_ seem pretty well preserved," she commented.

I swum along the paintings on the wall. "I wonder whose tomb this is? Ms. Natla didn't say."

"I only know the basics of the Atlantis story, but weren't there always three rulers? Maybe this tomb is the last one," Sam helpfully suggested, not actually giving me any ideas I hadn't already considered. There had been a woman beside Qualopec and Tihocan in my first dream, the one who Tihocan and Qualopec seemed to be at odds with. I had already figured this must be her final resting place.

Between Anubis' feet there was another doorway. It took a great deal of convincing to get Sam to follow me through it, but it turned out to just be a very short swim. On the other side was a huge underground courtyard with many separate dwellings carved into it. I took the camera from her and swam down into a few of them, expecting to find evidence that people had been living there.

Every house was set up as if a family would soon return to it. The water from the dam had washed all of the possessions in the houses around, but when each house had the same cutlery on the floor and the same clothes caught on the same furniture, I figured these houses were no ordinary dwellings. The top levels of each house were above water, so Sam and I climbed out and walked into one. Where there should have been a stone bed, there was a stone coffin.

"It's a city of the dead," I realised aloud. "Egyptians always buried their dead with everything they would need to live in the afterlife." I looked down at the coffin. The stone looked too heavy for me to move by myself. "Help me?"

She clipped the camera on her belt and we braced ourselves against the stone lid, finally managing to slide it across a little. Despite the torches burning outside the window, it was dark inside the coffin. Sam had both the torch and the camera, so I let her peek in.

She drew a sharp breath and jumped back. The movement made me draw the gun from under my arm, but nothing burst out of the coffin that needed shooting. "What is it?" I asked, and she gave me the torch.

I put my eye to the gap and found myself face-to-face with a gold-masked mummy. Despite the fact it was still, its features were far too similar to that of the centaurs for me to be at all comfortable with having a closer look.

We pushed the lid back on and looked uneasily at each other.

Sam swallowed. "I don't like this," she said. "I don't like how this place makes me feel."

I agreed with her. If this was a city of the dead, then every one of these houses contained at least one of those gold-masked mummies. "Let's keep going."

We were able to reach the next area simply by swimming along the surface of the water. As we left the courtyard, Sam was looking apprehensively back over her shoulder. "When Pierre took the Scion back past those centaurs, that's when they came to life," she said. "What happens if we need to come back here with the Scion fragment? Will all of them come to life?"

There were at least twenty houses, so I hoped that wasn't the case. "Let's hope if they do that they can't swim," I said.

"Yeah," Sam said as we swam through, "because mummies don't need to breathe, but we do."

The next area, unfortunately, was more of the same: rows and rows of houses with the addition of a giant Obelisk in the centre of the room. We swam up to it. About half-way up the pillar were some sigils with empty spaces in the rock below them. I wanted to have a closer look, but even standing on Sam as she clung to the pillar wasn't high enough for me to reach them.

High up at the top of the structure there was a chain connecting to metal gate above one of the houses. If I couldn't reach the sigils, there was no hope of having a closer look at that, either.

I dropped back into the water and looked around, noticing that four of the houses had raised bridges which all pointed toward the pillar. The ropes tethering the bridges weren't aged at all, but I thought I could probably hack through them with the axe.

As I was moving through the houses to get to the second level, I noticed some symbols engraved in the wall similar to what I thought I had seen on the pillar. On inspection, I discovered I could actually pull them clean out of the wall on a small stone brick. It was heavy and difficult to swim with, but I only needed to make it to the stairs anyway before I was walking out to the level with the bridge.

It turned out I didn't even need to break the rope, because there was a mechanism to loosen it. I turned it a few times until the small bridge was low enough for me to walk across it and examine the obelisk. The brick I had pulled from the wall fit very nearly into the space beneath one of the sigils. The second I put it there I heard something shift inside the pillar. It didn't do anything, but there were three others that were still empty.

Sam had been filming me. I called down to her. "Why don't you get that one and I'll get the other two?"

She looked hesitant, but while I was delayed in one of the houses examining a suspiciously empty coffin, Sam had already put both the other keystones in below their respective sigils. Mine was the last and when I slotted it in, the whole obelisk began to twist, knocking into the bridges we were standing on.

It fell out from underneath me and I panicked. This felt so much like my falling dreams, and it wasn't until I hit the surface of the water that I was able to remind myself that I was awake and still very much alive. It was actually a good thing that the area was filled with water, because that would have been quite a serious fall if we'd landed on stone.

Sam hadn't fared quite as well as I had, because the bridge had fallen on top of her and smacked her square in the back. When she caught sight of her blood swirling around her, she looked really distressed.

I led her over to a set of stairs, making her step out of the water so I could get a good look at where the bridge had struck her. It had torn her t-shirt, and there was quite a nasty graze along her shoulder-blades. It looked quite painful, but I didn't think it was serious, and nothing seemed to be broken. While I was examining it, Sam shrieked and grabbed my arm, pulling me further up the stairs.

When I looked where she was pointing, I saw two eyes above the surface and a deep shadow beneath it.

"Crocodiles," I said, letting Sam pull me all the way to the top of the flight as it approached the bottom of it. "Great. As if mummies weren't enough."

What was even more alarming was that the crocodile was having no problem at all climbing onto the stairs and wrenching its body slowly up them after the scent of Sam's blood. I had drawn the gun and was trying to figure out how on earth I was going to find a soft enough part to shoot, when Sam took a ceramic jar from a shelf near the end of the stairs and threw it toward the crocodile. It wasn't a great throw, but the sound of it smashing and the subsequent shower of pieces seemed to deter the creature. She threw another for good measure, but I didn't lower my gun under it had slunk back into the water.

"That's the final straw, I'm never swimming anywhere ever again," Sam told me with complete conviction. "Showers only from now on, I swear."

Her back was still bleeding a little, but it was a small amount of blood and the only thing it was really doing was staining her already torn t-shirt. It was in a bad location to bandage, so I opted to leave it.

We turned our attention back to the obelisk as we walked back out onto the second level. It had twisted, and in doing so had actually coiled the chain at the top of is around itself and pulled the gate open. It would have been very easy to swim back through the water and to the stairs that led to the gate if not for the missing crocodile.

Instead, we jumped across the rooftops and reached the gate that way. It was only when Sam dropped down onto the last set of stairs and landed awkwardly that I remembered her ankle and asked her about it.

"Codeine," she said. "It's taken the edge off, I'll be okay."

I didn't really have the luxury of not believing her, so we approached the newly-open gate but stopped in our tracks as we passed through it.

The room on the other side was _impossibly_ large, just like the coliseum had been, and there was a enormous smooth mound in the middle that looked like the haunches of a sleeping lion. It was all one rock, all of it, from the ceiling to the ground to the enormous structure. It would all have had to have been hand-chiselled from solid rock, and it was easily as big an area as the coliseum. All around the perimeter of the room, those eerie torches were burning.

I took Sam's hand and led her around the area, towards the front of the structure. When we passed its shoulders, the profile was immediately obvious.

It was a sphinx, and at its head it was as tall as a five-story building.

"Whoa," Sam said, sweeping her camera across the scene in front of us. "That is amazing, even the lighting is perfect: it's lit from underneath, that makes it look even more impressive."

I was busy admiring it, when a series of sharp sounds echoed across the walls of the cavern. I took Sam's forearm, trying to figure out what the sound was and where it came from. The way the strikes were grouped, it sounded like _galloping._

Around the edge of one of the sphinx paws surged a horribly familiar sight: a bandaged centaur, complete with heavy ten-foot spear and bird skull instead of a head.

I _screamed_ and took off in the other direction, dragging Sam after me. The forward light on her new camera wasn't nearly as blinding, so I just had _no_ idea how we were going to get out of this one.

The tail of the sphinx fell from the body and met the wall, and was, I hoped, too high for even the enormous centaur to jump over. I vaulted Sam cleanly over it, and tried to claw up myself, but couldn't make it without her help.

My blood ran cold.

"Lara!" Sam was shrieking. "Lara, hurry up!"

"I can't!" I yelled back. I didn't even have Pierre's grapple, because it hadn't fit in my belt bag beside the other gun. "It's too high! Throw me the grapple gun!"

I could hear her frantically rummaging in her bag as the hoof beats approached around the hind leg of the sphinx. She tossed me the grapple just as the centaur came into sight. It slowed when it saw it had me cornered, raising its spear. All I could think of was the _sound_ as the spear had thrust through Pierre's body.

I shot the grapple several times, trying to find something close enough and jagged enough to anchor the hook on.

Just as the centaur bucked on its hind legs and lunged at me, my grapple caught something and nearly dislocated my shoulder as it pulled me up through the air. It was only hooked a few metres above me on the wall of the cavern, and as I reached the same level as the hook it dislodged and shot back into the feeder. Rather than fall right back down there with the centaur, I pushed off the wall and angled myself to land on the sphinx's back.

The centaur watched my progress with far too much consideration for a mummified beast.

I could see Sam practically having a heart attack on the other side of the sphinx's tail. "Sam!" I called. "Come around here, I'll pull you up!"

The centaur looked from me to the other side of the tail, guessing what was happening. Turning around, it galloped off up the side of the body, clearly going to try its luck at getting around to Sam before I did.

I edged as far down the rounded back as I could without sliding to the ground myself and held my hand out to her "Quick!" I yelled at her, "It's coming, we have to be quick!"

She was jumping on the side of the leg, trying to reach my hand. "I can't reach!" She heard the galloping and looked back towards the shoulders, sighting the centaur approaching her. She screamed and tried again. I unhooked the axe from my belt and held out the handle toward her – that was just the extra few inches she needed for me to reach her. She grabbed it and I pulled her up just as the centaur came around to the tail.

As I slid across the back of the sphinx to drag her up as far as possible, I could hear the heavy blow of a spear bouncing off the rock of the sphinx's rear.

She was shaking, and I realised I was, too. I put and arm around her. "Oh, my God," I said unsteadily. "God, that was too, too close!"

She couldn't even speak. She was just on her stomach, propped up by her elbows, trembling. I lay back against the cool rock for a moment, and then sat up to put a hand on her shoulder. "Are you alright?"

She looked up at me, stricken. She rolled over and showed me a patch of fabric missing from the outside of one of her thighs. I hadn't realised it had been _that_ close. As I was staring at it, something landed on the rock next to us and burst into flames.

We scrambled away from it as liquid fire spilt down the body of the sphinx like the runoff from a Molotov cocktail. I pulled her to stand just as another fireball skimmed past my head.

We looked back at the centaur: it was moving along the perimeter of the hall, lifting the ethereal torches by their base one by one and throwing them toward us. It had uncanny aim even from so far away, and it was difficult to avoid being hit by them.

I looked at the other wall of the cavern, trying to figure out if perhaps I could grapple one of the torches myself and throw it back towards the centaur. I didn't like my chances, though, because I'd need to have the same supernatural reflexes as the centaur to catch it in the air without having it explode into flames on me.

"Can you reach them?" Sam asked me, watching where I was looking.

"No point," I said, ducking out of the way of another flying torch. "Even if I did pull one off the wall, it would explode when it reached us."

Sam had her brow down over her eyes as she watched the centaur throw another torch at us, which subsequently burst into flames when it hit the rock near where we were standing. "Explode," she said, as if she was trying to work something out. "They explode."

I narrowed my own eyes at her, trying to follow her line of thought.

"Shoot it," she said. "Shoot it when he picks it up, before he throws it. Can you do it?"

God, it sounded like it might actually work. I took my gun out. The centaur had reached the next torch, and I was standing still in the middle of the Sphinx's back with my gun pointed at it.

It made that ungodly sound, and wound up to throw it. I shot four times, and the fourth bullet hit the torch. Just as Sam had said, the wood shattered and sprayed the centaur with the liquid fire. It wasn't enough to kill it – was 'kill' even the right word? – but it did cause the creature to run along the side of the cavern, screaming like the grave and with its human-shaped torso on fire. As it ran under another torch, I shot that, too, until it was completely immersed in flame.

Collapsing to the ground, it writhed and clawed at itself until it burnt into ash.

Sam collapsed into _me,_ half-crying and half-laughing. "You did it!"

She was actually wrong; it had been her idea that had worked, I'd just executed it. " _We_ did it," I corrected her, and gave her a firm hug. "God, I hope there aren't more."

Sam made a noise in her throat. "I'm taking one of those torches, just in case."

We slid off the back of the Sphinx, and Sam went a lifted one of the intact torches from the wall, holding it far away from her body. "Look," she said, and shook it. Liquid fire spat off it and sizzled as it touched the stone ground. "That's really fucked up."

"I think I'm past the point where I wonder what causes that," I told her, smiling wryly.

"Tell me about it," she said. "I think I've moved from 'denial' into 'acceptance'. It's like, there are these torches that have burnt for centuries. The fire is made out of burning liquid. But, whatever, zombie centaurs are trying to kill me."

Between the sphinx's legs, there were stairs leading downward to a doorway. We descended slowly into it; I didn't feel comfortable enough to stow my gun, especially when there were a series of loud noises echoing from the hallways we were walking into.

Underneath the sphinx were a network of corridors, all lit with the torches. There was nothing else unusual about them, but an uneasiness had settled in the pit of my stomach and I couldn't shake it. They were cut in such a way that indicated to me they were leading toward something important: I supposed it was the actual tomb.

When we rounded the last corner, the first thing I saw was an empty pedestal similar to the one I'd seen in Qualopec's tomb with the scion fragment on it.

The next thing I saw was Larson, holding his shotgun one hand and the Scion fragment in the other. He was grinning and lifting the fragment up where I could see it as if to say, 'Look, I got it before you did!' All I could focus on, though, was that gun. He had the third fragment, which meant as far as I knew, there was no reason for Ms. Natla not to order him to kill us.

"Been for a dip, I see," he drawled, commenting on our damp clothes. "Nice night for it."

Careful to avoid her torch, I pushed Sam behind the corner and peeked around it. I cocked the gun. That _fucking bastard_ , I thought. You lying, manipulative, dangerous bastard, don't you dare joke with me. I am _not_ going to give you another opportunity to mess with me.

I could hear his footsteps approaching. Taking a deep breath, I stepped around the corner, raising the nose of the gun and aiming directly at his body. I shot him three times in the chest before he could lift that shotgun and blow mine completely open.

I didn't realise until I'd already pulled the trigger that he'd actually stowed the gun in the holster on his back, and that over his shoulder, I could see pieces of a mummy that had been blown apart strewn around where he'd been standing.

He looked from me to his chest with the grin fading from his face, and then fell to the ground. The Scion fragment he'd just rescued rolled past me on the floor toward Sam.

I jogged over to him as he lay on his back. He was touching his fingertips to one of the bullet holes in his ribs and wincing at the blood on them. He could probably still have drawn and fired at me easily, but he didn't even try.

Instead, he coughed weakly several times, trying to get enough strength to roll over. "Back pocket," he hissed. "My back pocket."

Feeling a growing sense of dread, I rolled him slightly out of the pool of his own blood and reached into his blood-soaked back pocket.

When I pulled my hand out, I had the second Scion fragment in it.

I felt as if at that second, the whole world shrank onto me. All my own blood rushed from my head and I nearly fell over next to him:

Ms. Natla had been the one lying, not Larson. He hadn't given it to her at all.

She'd been lying, and she knew _exactly_ what she was doing by lying to me. Just like a puppet with my strings moved by her, her lie had caused me to shoot him down, and now I was absolutely _covered_ in his blood.

Sam peeked around the corner and saw what I was holding in my hand. "Oh, my God, Lara," she murmured. "No…"

My knees were weak and I couldn't stand up, so I leaned onto his chest, trying futilely to stem the flow of blood from my bullet holes. It didn't matter, though, because even as I closed the ones on the front of his chest, the puddle of blood behind his back was spreading out all the way to my boots.

I looked at him, my jaw open. "Larson, I… she said that you had given it to her!" I could barely breathe myself, and _my_ chest was still intact. "Oh, my God, what have I done?"

"I'll send the dry-cleaning bill to Natla," he murmured, smiling gently at me. "Make sure she pays it." With that, his eyes rolled in their sockets.

While I pumped uselessly at his chest and begged him to keep breathing, he died in front of me.


	32. Chapter 32

"Lara…" Sam had her hand on my shoulder.

She'd been standing back while I'd been trying unsuccessfully to revive him. In the end, when I sat up, I could see how pointless the exercise was. I'd been kneeling in his blood, and it had run so far down the corridor that Sam had trekked up to me. It didn't matter if I was beating his heart, because there was nothing in his veins to push around.

"Come on," she said gently. Her face looked almost as pale as his in the torch light. She helped me up and put the third fragment in my hand, then bent down to the floor and picked up the second, wiping it on her t-shirt before giving it to me as well.

I looked down at them in either palm. They were reacting to each other and I should have been interested in that, but I was too distracted by the blood all up my arms and on my knees. "I can't believe I shot him," I said. "I should have said something, or waited or.. something. How could I have been so stupid?"

She put a hand gingerly on my back. "It's not your fault, Lara. You know that."

I stared down at him. "It wasn't his fault, either." I just couldn't shake the horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. There must be something I could do for him, even now. "He has a daughter, or had, I don't know. I should…" I shrugged. "I should find out if there's anything I can do for her."

"Maybe you should just leave it," Sam said. "I mean, it's noble and all, but you don't really know what sort of relationship they had." She had a point: I'd held her a lot when she'd been crying about the things her mother had said to her while she was still at boarding school.

"You're probably right," I said, leaning into the arm she'd offered me. "What would I tell her, anyway? Look at him."

We stared down at him for a few moments.

Sam made a curious noise. "He's dry," she commented. "I mean, apart from the blood, his clothes are dry."

She was right. "There must be another way out," I realised aloud. I looked in the direction he'd approached us from. "It must be that way. We won't have to take the Scion fragments past those mummies after all."

I looked back down at Larson's body. It seemed like a horrible end to be left in here, with whoever's tomb this was. It wasn't right for him, but it wasn't as if we could just take him with us. "Can I have the torch?"

She passed it to me. Taking a breath, I held the flame against his clothing, just as I had seen Qualopec do to Tihocan in my dream. Also just as in my dream, the fire _spilled_ across him and within several seconds it had completely enveloped him. Sam and I stepped back away from the flame as it devoured every inch of his flesh and clothing. When it was done, there wasn't even a skeleton, but a pile of fine grey ash which blew down the corridor away from the direction he'd come.

"A warrior's burial," I said, thinking it wasn't the end I wanted for myself. "I seem to be the cause of a lot of these."

Sam gave me a look. "Lara."

I swallowed. "I know, not my fault." It still _felt_ like my fault: I should have realised. I should have stopped for a minute and _thought_. That woman knew me too well.

"Come on," Sam said. I nodded, tucking the quivering fragments of the Scion in my pocket and letting her lead me down the long corridor in the direction he'd come in.

The opening looked rough and there was rubble everywhere; if I had to hazard a guess I'd say it had been recently blown open with explosives. I put the torch down as we approached it, drawing my gun and shushing Sam.

The opening was silent; completely silent. I couldn't hear anything moving at all, and after a couple of minutes of waiting, I gestured at Sam. "He must have done it by himself."

I peeked out just to be sure there weren't men waiting to ambush us and saw nothing, so I got her to boost me out and had pulled her out after me. We had surfaced halfway up a small hill on the side of Lake Nasser, on a wide ledge over a cliff. There was a path leading down to the water on one side. From where I stood, I couldn't see any boats tethered there. They must be waiting for us at the other entrance, I thought, feeling relieved. Now we just needed to figure out how to destroy these fragments before she found us.

I was walking out onto the ledge when the Scion fragments in my pocket began to quietly hum. While Sam explored our surroundings, I took them out.

Sam had been leaning experimentally over the edge to look at the water below as the humming intensified. She clamped her hands over her ears, coming over to look at them with me. "Why are they suddenly doing that now?"

The sound was penetrating, and if it had been any louder I wouldn't have doubted its ability to shatter glass.

I shook my head at her to indicate I didn't know. As I was looking between them, I saw some similarities between the pegs in one and the slots in the other. They'd fit together, I thought, and pushed the two little discs against each other, twisting them in opposition until they locked.

The resulting burst of light and sound dazed me. I dropped them and fell to the ground myself, covering my eyes and calling out to Sam. My voice sounded muted, as if I were hearing it through the bones of my head and not through my ears. I was scrambling along the ground in silent darkness until something knocked me onto my back.

When my vision cleared and my hearing returned, I was looking upwards at a figure standing over me. It was a woman, and for a second against the moonlight I thought it might be Sam from the shape of her hair.

"Lara!" Sam called, from somewhere else.

I gasped and went to reach for my gun, but a foot stepped on my wrist. "Oh, Lara," Ms. Natla's voice said from above me. "Haven't you got enough blood on your hands already?"

 _Her._ Larson _had_ come with them, after all, even if he hadn't given her the second fragment.

"On _my_ hands? It's your hands that should be covered with it!" I yelled at her, drawing the gun with my other hand and shooting up at her. "You _knew_ he had it, you _knew_ what would happen, you _bitch_!"

I couldn't hear with enough clarity to know if the bullets had hit her, but they couldn't have because she just stood over me while I emptied the magazine into her torso. I could see a faint smile on her face as I clicked past the last bullet and squeezed helplessly at the trigger.

"And yet." She held up her hands where I could see them. "Completely clean. A good CEO knows how to delegate."

I looked at my gun, snapping the magazine out to check that it hadn't jammed. It hadn't. All the bullets had been deployed, and I was at point-blank range. How on earth…?

She watched my progress with amusement, and then stepped off me. "Also, since we're technically in my workplace, I'd ask you to watch the inappropriate language."

Watch this, I thought, and swung my feet around and hooked onto her ankle. It should have tripped her, but she was _solid_. I felt like I'd just kicked a brick wall.

"Now I'm about to treat you to something special," She walked casually over to where I'd dropped the two linked fragments. When she spoke again, she was looking away from me. "Are you sure you don't want to film this momentous occasion, Samantha?"

"Go to hell!" Sam said. I looked over to her; she had her back against the rock face close to the edge of the cliff. I wanted to go over to her, but there wasn't enough time.

Ms. Natla just chuckled. Turning back toward me, I could see her lift the leather pouch from her cleavage and take the first fragment out of it.

" _No!"_ I yelled, not knowing what would happen.

She had all three fragments: I had failed.

Smiling triumphantly at me, she pushed the two separate parts together.

It was like Yamatai: I was flying through the air and I couldn't see and couldn't hear. I didn't know which way was up or down until I felt my body collide with the ground and tumble across it. I crawled in the direction I thought was away from Ms. Natla, poking at my ears and rubbing at my eyes to try and regain my senses.

Ms. Natla was calling to someone and I could hear Sam's voice somewhere, as if a thousand miles away. I didn't know where it was or where I was so I scrambled around, looking for her. I had reached the edge of the cliff when I found her hand. There were footsteps everywhere. The area was suddenly filled with people and I felt someone grab my legs.

All I could see of Sam was a dark shadow. I touched her face. "I'm sorry, Sam," I told her. "I love you, I'm sorry."

Before anyone could grab her, too, I pushed her over the edge and down into the water she said she'd never swim in again. I could hear her scream and then the splash as she hit the surface. I closed my eyes. I hoped to whoever was listening that she would be alright.

I heard Ms. Natla sigh. "Go fish her out," she was saying. "I'm not in the mood for unnecessary delays. Don't let her get away."

"Yes, get away, Sam!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, in case she could hear it. Someone kicked my side with a heavy boot and cut short my shouting. I coughed.

When I was fully aware of what was happening around me again, my legs were being bound and so were my hands. I tried to roll over, but found myself against several sets of legs. I kicked at them.

Ms Natla was standing on the edge of the cliff in a long coat, squinting toward the water. When she couldn't see anything, she turned back to me. The completed Scion was glowing in her hand and she saw me looking at it. "I suppose I have you to thank for this," she said, smiling down at it. "You didn't break your contract, after all."

"I never would have agreed to work with you if I'd known what you are," I hissed at her, elbowing the man who was trying to bind my wrists in the face. "No one would willingly work for a lying bitch like you!"

She wandered over to where the men were trying with difficulty to tie me up. "Everyone works for me in one way or another," she said, watching me placidly as I struggled. "The way I see it, you have just one choice: you can work for me _on_ my payroll, or off it." She gestured at the men around her. "These men made the simple choice. You could, too." She crouched down next to me. "Although, you're a Croft, so I doubt you will. Not without the right incentive. "

I glared directly at her as someone tried to force a gag into my mouth. I turned my head and pushed my chin against it. "I'm going to kill you," I told her. "Before you do whatever you you're going to do with the Scion, I'm going to kill you."

Hands took a firm grip of my ponytail and eventually the men succeeded in gagging me.

She put her finger under my chin and examined me. "Such spirit," she said, actually gazing at me with _admiration_. "'Give up' is not in your vocabulary: that's what sets you apart from all this rabble. You're a woman after my own heart. "

One of the men said to her, "Quite the little spitfire, isn't she? I just think got my daily workout trying to tie her up."

Ms. Natla smiled. "Yes, it's one of the many things I like about her." I groaned and pulled against the bindings. She glanced at me over her shoulder as she turned. "As entertaining as her heroics are to watch, could you sedate her? I don't want to have to waste _more_ time recapturing her if she manages to escape, as well."

"Yes, Ma'am," the man said, and I could hear latches being sprung open. I tried to turn over to see what they were doing, but I was being restrained. Someone swabbed my arm, and then I felt a needle piercing my skin. I wriggled, hoping to snap it off before they injected whatever it was into me, but several sets of hands were holding me down very firmly as the solution was fed into a vein.

"Make sure you conceal her properly," Ms. Natla was saying. "Those paparazzi keep appearing everywhere. The last thing I need is to be accused of _drugging_ young women, too, because that becomes a criminal issue. I don't want hordes of police anywhere near this until _after_ I've activated the Scion."

She probably gave further instructions after that, but I couldn't focus on them because a feeling of tremendous exhaustion and heaviness was beginning to overcome me. I fought against it, trying to roll over against the many hands holding me. I felt like I was falling again. I was falling head first through nothingness, light all around me.

When finally landed, it was on my feet and all my bindings were gone. I stood up, trying to figure out where I was. I was dimly aware of being hoisted somewhere, thrown into something. It didn't seem important, though. Not as important as the fact I was standing on the crest of an island temple, watching swarms of men with spears pile off crude boats. They were rushing the small city I was standing in, trampling the beautiful gardens and setting fire to everything flammable. The island was just beautiful; it seemed like such a waste. I wondered what it was all for.

There was an opening in the floor near me, so I descended through it. It led down to a hall where three figures were standing around a glowing pedestal. The huge and ornate doors at the foot of the hall had been bolted shut.

Qualopec, I recognised immediately. The man standing with him was Tihocan, and the woman was there, too, but her face was shrouded by her headdress because she had her back to me.

"This is it," Qualopec was saying. "The Higher Gods would have already acted if it were not."

From the outside the doorway, there was a tremendous thundering blow and the lock on the door bulged.

"It's just so hard to accept," Tihocan reflected, his melodic voice resonating on the marble walls. "This must be how mortals feel as they grow old and die."

Qualopec observed the efforts to break down the door for a few moments longer, and then nodded. He lifted the glowing Scion from the pedestal. "They will be in here shortly. Let's disassemble the Heart and scatter it."

"No!" the woman said. Her voice sounded familiar, even in whatever language she was speaking. "You _fools_! This isn't over, we can still defeat them!"

Qualopec drew a long-suffering breath. "Sister," he said. "You know as well as I do the Heart is not to be used for war."

She gestured towards the doorway. "It will never be used for anything ever again if we do not use its power to save our fair city!" She held her arms out. "Qualopec, Tihocan, there are no more chances! This is it, this is our final chance to stop our city sinking beneath the waves for eternity!"

Tihocan had the same sadness in his eyes as he had when Qualopec had buried him. "Sister, if this is what is willed—"

"What is willed? _What is willed?_ " She was shouting at them. "Look at this beautiful place," she said, standing in the centre of the shining hall. "Look at it! There is no place on earth more beautiful than Atlantis. There will never _be_ anywhere as beautiful. How could any gods will this be destroyed?" She took a step towards Qualopec. "Come, brothers, let us raise an army and defend our home!"

Neither Tihocan nor Qualopec moved.

"Please!" she shouted, her desperation audible. The bolt in the door began to split in the middle. "Brothers, this is _our home_!" Rushing over to Qualopec with her gown trailing out behind her, she tried to pry the Scion from him.

"Even if I give it to you," Qualopec said calmly to her, "this is a triumvirate. It takes three to rule, and three to use the Heart. I will not help you stain this sacred object with blood."

She fought him until the very last second, until the doors were about to burst open. "You will condemn us and your city to oblivion, then," she said, her voice raw. "To briefly spare the mortal invaders whose short lives will soon be over, anyway!"

Ignoring her, Qualopec held the Scion in his hand and twisted it. It fell apart, the glow fading from it. He passed one fragment to Tihocan, and one to the woman. "Let us finally retire."

No sooner had the light completely died from each fragment of the Heart, a rumble from deep within the earth shook the hall. The three figures moved to the rooftop where I had landed and I followed them up.

From here, I could see the invaders piling back onto the ships they had come from as the land split underneath them, bubbling with lava. The beautiful vista that had been so colourful and full of life began to burn as the lava seeped through it, and one by one the beautiful temples and buildings fell with each shudder of the earth.

On the edge of the island, waves hammered into the shore and ate into the land.

"Ten thousand years," the woman was saying, shaking her head in disbelief. "Ten thousand years we've lived here, and you have just sat by and given up as the mortals destroy us."

Tihocan turned around and put a warm hand on his compatriot's shoulder. "It's over, Sister. Our empire has been shrinking for a thousand years. Our people are dead or exiled. It's not giving up: it's our time."

The woman shrugged off his touch and walked to the edge of the building, watching as the lava consumed all the beautiful gardens.

"Come," Qualopec said, extending his one hand to Tihocan and one to the woman. "Let me embrace my beloved one last time before we retire to the ends of the earth and our final resting places."

Tihocan took his hand, but the woman didn't.

"Sister?" Tihocan asked her.

Qualopec and Tihocan shared a glance, before Qualopec released Tihocan's hand and slowly approached her, his insect legs clattering against the stone. "Sister," he said gently. "I know it's painful to watch, that's why we must end it quickly."

"I won't do it," she said quietly, and tried to pull away from him, but he was too strong for her.

He had the grim determination I remembered so well from Roth. "So be it," he said, and pried the Scion fragment from her hand. "Do as you will. I will scatter your fragment for you. Please have the wisdom to end your life," he said, trying to comfort her. "I don't want you to suffer remembering your home."

"This isn't the end. It can't be." Her anguish was palpable in her voice. This was a woman watching everything she knew and loved destroyed and listening to the people she loved talked about ending their lives. The power to stop it was right there, in their hands, but they wouldn't use it.

When she turned toward him, she was also facing me. It was the first time in any of the dreams that I had seen her properly. Her beautiful face, her blonde hair: I recognised her immediately and it made the breath catch in my throat.

"Farewell, then, Natla," Qualopec said, touching her cheek just as he'd touched Tihocan's. "I hope you are finally able to find peace in eternity."


	33. Chapter 33

When I came to, I was being sling-carried by my armpits and legs through a fire lit corridor. There were many pairs of footsteps echoing around me, but no voices. I had absolutely no sense of how long I'd been unconscious, but judging by how different my surroundings were it must have been quite some time.

The same torches from the tombs lined the walls. In their light, intricate filigrees on the ceiling glowed a deep orange, accented against the black marble. They almost looked like writing in some ancient script, but I'd never seen anything like it. As far as I knew there was no precedent for this in any of the ancient cultures I'd come across. Of course, there had been no magical torches in those cultures, either.

My muscles felt like jelly, I couldn't move them. I wanted to kick the man who was carrying me in the face, but even taking one breath after another was enough effort. No one had noticed I was awake.

"This place gives me the creeps," a voice said, eventually. "I thought Atlantis was supposed to be beautiful."

Someone hurriedly shushed him. "She says it'll be different when it's above the surface again."

They'd already managed to take me to Atlantis?

When I'd come to my senses enough to think practically about what was going on, my first thought was of Sam. I wondered if they'd caught her, and if she was with us. God, I hoped she was alright. The way Ms. Natla had been speaking about her suggested they wouldn't kill her, but I couldn't be certain.

Ms. Natla, I thought, and then corrected myself: Natla. No wonder she'd been so personally involved with what her corporation was digging up: she was actually one of the Atlantean Triumvirate twelve thousand years ago. I could barely even imagine a number that big, let alone imagine having lived for as long as she must have. The gun not hurting her, the power she had over people, it made sense: she was some sort of immortal. God knew what powers she had. I at least felt slightly comforted by the thought she was unable to get the Scion fragments herself, though. It suggested her powers had limits. That hopefully meant I would still be able to stop her, despite the fact I'd completely failed to stop her from completing the Scion.

I wasn't doing anything anytime soon, though. I could hardly move and I couldn't imagine what she wanted with me. Well, based on her interactions with me so far I _could_ imagine, but I hoped it wasn't the case. I shivered internally at the thought of being part of someone's harem.

The men carried me through a doorway which led to a wide and stately stairwell. I couldn't see where we were headed, but on either side of the stairwell were fire pits that burnt all the way up the wall. The same patterns glowed behind the fire, in straight lines and grouped like scripture.

The mouth of the stairwell lead through two enormous, richly engraved doors. They were the same doors that had very nearly been split open in my dream.

"Ma'am," one of the men said, sounding like he was acknowledging her.

I closed my eyes; it seemed simpler at this stage to let her assume I was still unconscious.

"Well, not exactly the title I was accustomed to," Natla's voice said smoothly, "but I suppose it will suffice. Put her in that throne. Make sure you tie her properly: if she escapes, she'll kill all of you."

Shortly after they flopped me on a solid surface, they actually cut my arms and my legs free. It was incredible torture because I knew I simply would not be able to overpower anyone at that moment. In the end, they tied my arms out wide, looping the rope around the back of the throne. My ankles were laced to either leg of it.

"Leave us," she told them.

I could hear their footsteps file out of the hall. I'd let my head rest where it had rolled, and it had fallen against a really tender part of my skull. They must have been really tossing me about, I thought, wanting to move slightly. I wondered if she was looking at me. In the end I moved it just a fraction, hoping for the best.

"I _knew_ you were awake."

My heart jumped. I opened my eyes.

She was standing calmly in front of me, wearing the same gown I'd seen on her in my dream. It was rich red velvet and covered in the same beautiful filigrees that were all over the wall. Most striking, though, was the neckline: it exposed all of her shoulders and most of her cleavage, falling down even further at the back. Two tiny gold straps around her neck held it up. She wasn't wearing the headdress.

She smiled slightly, leaning forward to removing my gag and in the process showing me much more of her breasts that she had before. "Do you like it? This was what was fashionable back when I last walked these halls."

I swallowed against a dry throat and licked my dry lips. I wasn't even sure I was able to speak until I did. "No." The main reason I didn't like it was because despite everything that had happened, despite everything I knew about her and what she'd done to Sam and I, I was _still_ attracted to her. I hated her for it, and for everything else.

She tilted her head in concession. The long dress trailed along the smooth stone floor behind her as she walked to the side of me. "To be honest, neither do I." She brushed the fabric with her palms. "I had been expecting it to feel like a homecoming, putting on this robe. Instead, I've discovered I prefer suits. Much more practical."

She examined each of my bindings. I watched her tour them, trying to make my breathing match the speed of my heart. I felt lightheaded. Why was she just chatting casually to me while I was tied up?

When she went around behind the throne, it gave me the opportunity to quickly look all around the room for anything I could later use to try and defeat her. The Scion was mounted just as it had been before Qualopec had removed it, rotating slowly in the air above the three-pronged pedestal. The same bright glow was radiating from it, and that was when I realised that the torches that had been mounted on the wall in my dream and on the walls everywhere were missing from the great hall. The only light in the room was the Scion.

Sam was nowhere to be seen.

God, I hoped she was okay. Even though I desperately wanted to be with her especially now, I hoped she'd escaped.

"Do you like the way it feels?" She was standing beside me.

I licked my lips again. "Are you asking if I like being tied up and held against my will?" I said, my throat hoarse. I felt like I hadn't spoken in years.

She gestured at the hall we were facing. "I mean sitting on the throne." I looked sharply at her, brow lowered. I wasn't sure what she was alluding to, but I didn't like it. She smiled down at me. "It will grow on you."

I stared at her. Surely she wasn't suggesting she meant _me_ to occupy it? I knew Qualopec and Tihocan had already ended their lives and wouldn't be standing beside her. Even if they _had_ been living, I doubt they would have agreed, anyway, either of them. Natla and I, that made two people. Who was the third? Larson was dead. Pierre was dead. The only other loose end was…

She didn't mean for Sam to be the third?

Natla watched my face, her lazy half-smile deepening. "When did you figure out who I am?"

I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of answering her. Instead, I said, "It doesn't matter who you were. You can't rule and empire that doesn't exist."

Rather than be insulted, she nodded slightly. "That is precisely why I intend to recreate it," she told me. "In the height of our reign, we were greater than Rome. There was peace, prosperity. But most of all, there was beauty. When people are safe, they create beautiful spaces and beautiful art." She spoke so romantically of her memories that a wistfulness came about her. "And the music: you can't even imagine it."

I couldn't, and I also couldn't imagine how she thought she was going to smoothly transition back to Atlantis when twelve thousand years had passed. "Even with all this beauty you speak of, how do you think you'll convince people to just hand over their national identities and become Atlantean?"

She exhaled. "Well, of course there will be some initial resistance. There always is, but it never lasts."

"I know you're used to getting things by force, Natla, but you can't force people to give up who they are."

She chuckled. "Yes, I can." Nodding at the Scion, she walked over to it and held her hand out to feel the warmth of its glow. "With this. Would you like a demonstration?"

I felt uneasy. "No."

She didn't believe me for a single second. "Oh, come now, Lara. I know you've been wondering what it does. Let me show you."

Without waiting for me to respond, she raised her hands either side of it. I knew well enough to jam my eyes shut against the resulting flash of light, but there wasn't much I could do against the sound. As my vision cleared and my ears rang, I found myself facing a familiar figure that had been created from thin air in front of me.

There was no hair and no skin, but I knew that body. _Sam_ , I thought, repulsed by the seeping muscles. The figure was motionless, completely stop-animated with the only moving portion a heart beating inside her ribs. I could see it, and I could see her exposed veins and arteries pulsing with every contraction of it. As I watched, it took a breath. It was like looking at a skinned rabbit that was still alive, but it was in the shape of Sam.

I didn't know _what_ it was. I felt sick to my stomach and if there had been anything in my stomach at all, I would have actually been sick.

Natla came up beside it. "What do you think?" she asked. "Of course, without the second and third person to operate the Heart, they have no motion or mind of their own respectively. She's completely unable to defend herself." With that, Natla curled her hands around its neck and squeezed the throat. The Sam-creature's lungs strained to inflate, but it didn't fight back. It didn't move at all, it just let Natla strangle it. The heart sped, and before long the muscle was simply quivering ineffectively inside its chest.

When Natla released the creature, it sighed – in Sam's voice – and collapsed to the ground.

I stared at it in abject horror as it twitched. "Oh, my God…" I murmured. I was shaking. "You're a _monster._ "

"If you think that's impressive, you should see what we can make when there's three of us operating the Heart."

I didn't want to know. "Natla, this isn't right!" God, seeing Sam's body like that... It looked like she'd been burnt alive and her skin had melted completely off her. I never wanted to see it again, but I couldn't look away from it. It was branded into my retinas.

"It's creation," she said. "Pure and simple. Much faster than the ordinary way we are created, with much greater control. You could build anything with it: a family, an ecosystem, even an entire billion-people strong army. There's nothing 'not right' about it: it's just like the traditional way only much, much better." She pushed the creature's body aside with her foot as if she'd simply dropped some rubbish in the floor. That movement in itself was distressing, even if it wasn't Sam.

"You're mad," I told her. "You're mad if you think I would ever help you do that."

"Not at first," she said. "At first, you'll do it because I force you to. Then, over time, you will come to see that Atlantis is a favourable alternative to any of the political systems that are in power today. The people will be happy under our leadership. Atlantis will be the beautiful, prosperous empire it once was." She touched my cheek, and a turned my head violently away from her hand. "I don't expect you to understand that now. But you will, and it doesn't matter how long it takes." She looked back at the Scion. "With the Heart, you will live for eternity."

I glared at her. She sounded like Mathias: brutal and completely committed to the cause. The only difference was that Mathias wasn't immortal and couldn't use magic.

"'A billion-people strong army'? How many hundreds of thousands of people will have to die before you get your 'prosperous empire'?"

All she afforded that question was a vocal shrug. "Just think of the billions who'll live peacefully after we've created it."

I thought about how easily she'd had me kill Larson. I suppose in the scheme of twenty thousand years, having someone work for you for six of them wasn't even a drop in the ocean. But he should have meant something to her. He meant something to me, and I hardly knew him. "Someone like you should _never_ rule anything," I told her. I sounded venomous, even to myself.

She raised a perfect eyebrow.

"You talk about creating life like some sort of science project," I told her. "But look at what you do to it," I nodded towards the Sam-creature. "People mean nothing to you, they are just a means to an end. That isn't right, Natla. How can someone who's immortal ever really understand the value of life enough to control the creation of it?"

She laughed without humour. "You're lecturing me on the value of life? Who was it you just shot?" God, that _hurt._ I felt those words like a punch in my own chest."How many families did you rob of their fathers on Yamatai, Lara? How many wives will get their husbands back in a body bag?"

God, how _dare_ she go there? She had no idea what it was like! " _Shut up!_ " I yelled at her, pulling at my bindings. "That was different!"

"I suppose you spared every possible life you could, did you? Didn't even shoot one person more than what you needed to stay alive yourself?"

Just by saying that, I could remember the men I'd killed for the sake of simplicity. I could have kept them alive, I thought. I could have let them go home.

"It wasn't like that," I said, both trying and trying not to remember what it actually _had_ been like. "I didn't have any choice!"

She towered over me. "I know the story, Lara. I know what choice you had. Not even one single life needed to be lost for you to get off that island: just one soul."

I wanted to shout at her to shut up and tell her that she was wrong, but the worst part was that she wasn't. We could have surrendered, all of us. We could have handed Sam over and then sailed home. I would be the only one with no home to go to; Roth was right when he said I didn't understand sacrifice. Instead of making that sacrifice, I had killed dozens of people. Alex was dead. Grim was dead. Roth was dead. So very many people were dead, all so I could keep Sam. I could just remember her begging me through the radio: I would have burnt down all of Japan to get to her. Natla was right, how could _I_ lecture _her_ on the value of life?

I felt sick.

"There, now," Natla's voice said easily, putting a hand under my chin and tilting up my face. "You keep discovering you're not the person you thought you were, don't you? I don't need to change what you are at all. I just need to show you." I closed my eyes. I couldn't bear to look at her. "And that's why when we find Samantha she'll be the perfect number three in our triumvirate," Natla said. "She's a catalyst for action in you, and I want my army and my empire."

When she let my chin drop, I turned my head from her. The only thing I could be thankful for was that 'when we find her' meant that they didn't already have Sam. I was thankful for Sam that they didn't have her, but not for myself. I desperately wanted Sam to tell me what she remembered had happened on Yamatai so I could compare it to the version Natla had just presented to me. I wanted her to kiss me and tell me that none of it was my fault.

God, but I knew that it was. She would tell me it wasn't because she was my best friend, but I knew that it was. Yamatai, the Scion fragments, Pierre, Larson. Just who the hell was I now? There was nothing about myself I recognised from the night before the Endurance had set sail. Natla was right.

She seemed to have finished her conversation with me, because I could hear her walking away. I did stop her before she left, though. "What…" I called after her, and she half-turned toward me. "What will you do to Sam when you find her?"

Natla had that professional smile again. "Whatever I need to do to get you both to do what I want."


	34. Chapter 34

Natla didn't return for what seemed like several hours. Her men were wandering up and down the grand underground stairwell, periodically checking to make sure I wasn't trying anything.

During that time I'd established between check-ups that the rope binding my hands was anchored to the back legs of the throne, and that the ropes around my legs were tied so tightly it hurt to flex my muscles. The knots were absolutely expert; no amount of wriggling or rubbing or twisting was going to loosen them at all. There was no escaping: I supposed the men were listening carefully to Natla when she warned them that I would kill them all if I escaped.

I gave up and leaned back against the backrest, gazing at the ornate ceiling as the lights from the Scion travelled across it.

Natla was right about that point, too: I _would_ have killed them. Just like I had in Yamatai and just as I had in Hotel Rex. Did that make me as ruthless as she was? Did I really have no respect for their lives, either, just because didn't know their names and hadn't had a conversation with them? Or was I just doing exactly what needed to be done in order to save a greater number of people in the long run?

God, that sounded like her and her utopia, a small sacrifice for the greater good. I just didn't know. I felt like no matter how I tried, I couldn't get a sense of what the right perspective was.

I wondered what my parents would think; what Roth would think. He never used to dwell on this stuff because he always had some way of stepping back and asking himself the right questions. Would he have been disappointed in me, or proud of me if he saw me now? What would _he_ have done with the Scion fragments, and what would he do now?

I sighed. He probably never would have let Natla mess with him in the first place.

It was just so embarrassing how easily she has wielded me. I wondered how much of the killing I'd done was her engineering, and if she'd done it on purpose so she could have me here, now, thinking these thoughts. I sat an analysed every single kill I could remember: and some of them all just blended together. I didn't have to kill them, though, especially not that man who'd been putting our possessions into garbage bags at Hotel Rex. Maybe by telling myself she'd engineered that situation just to mess with me, I was actually just looking for an easy way to shift the blame onto her so I didn't have to face the uncomfortable truth that I was a ruthless killer?

Being tied in there, alone with my thoughts, there wasn't any part of me that didn't hurt. I bet she'd planned that, if nothing else.

As if being forced to sit in the same position for hours was not painful in itself, I was _really_ thirsty. I almost wished she would come back so I could ask her for a drink. Would she even give me one, though? Or would she just sit the Scion in front of me and keep me alive and suffering indefinitely until I agreed to help her build her grand army?

The Scion was slowly oscillating in the centre of the room, bathing it in warm light. I watched it for ages, asking myself the same circular questions about killing that I knew I couldn't answer.

As it spun, it threw shadows on parts of the room and lit others. I watched the shadows rotating slowly around the room, thinking that it reminded me of a mini disco ball that Sam had had at boarding school. Just like the disco ball, the Scion seemed so harmless at that moment. A peaceful, inanimate object that only awoke when Natla was handling it. I got no sense that the item itself was inherently evil or dangerous; I supposed like many things it wasn't a weapon until it was in the wrong person's hands.

That made me wonder if I was a wrong person, and if in my hands it would be a weapon.

I had been gazing at it, when I heard a sound next to me. I took a sharp breath and turned my head toward it, but couldn't move. It was a terrifying feeling: anything could kill me right now and I would be powerless to stop it, just like the Sam-creature.

"Oh, my God! Lara! You're okay!"

I hadn't been expecting to hear Sam's voice, so I didn't believe it at first. I thought that maybe the Sam-creature that had been pushed beside the throne may actually have lived, after all.

Then, someone crawled out of the shadows and rushed over to me. As soon as the light hit her face, my heart leapt. "Sam!"

The first thing she did was touch my cheek and then look me over, just to be certain that I really was okay and it really was me. "You look terrible!" she said, and then corrected herself. "I mean, obviously you're gorgeous, but you look half-dead."

I _felt_ half-dead. God, seeing her face made me want to cry. "What are you doing here? How did you _get_ here?"

She stood in front of the throne, looking down at all my bindings. "The short version?" She made a face. "Okay, there isn't a short version. I filmed it, though, you can see the long version."

I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. "You _filmed_ it?"

She smiled, but there was something deeply haunted about her smile. "I just promised myself that one day we would sit at home after this is all over and watch the video together." She looked me over. "Now how do I get you out of this?"

"My arms are tied to the back legs," I told her. "If you can get those off, I can do my ankles."

"Okay," she said, rounding the throne, "I can—Oh, my God!" I twisted to try and see what she was looking at. "What is that, is that _me?_ "

I guessed she was looking at the Sam-creature. "That's what the Scion can do." I swallowed. "Sam, she's going to use us against each other. She wants to make a huge army and turn the world into a giant Atlantis, but she can't do it without three people, and for some reason she wants those people to be us."

I could feel the ropes pull as Sam felt along them in the shadow of the throne for the knots. "Yeah, I heard the men saying." I heard the sound of her folding out the LCD on the camera. There was a gentle glow of light behind me. "Apparently the three rulers all need to have been part of some ceremony before the Scion can be used by them. I guess she already was, like, twenty thousand years ago or whatever. They didn't know the details, though."

"Those men…" I was staring at the doorway, sure that at any second they would come to check on me and see Sam untying me. "How on earth did you get past them? They're everywhere."

"If there's one thing college taught me, it's how to set up a scene," she said, sounding a little smug. The ropes fell slack on my wrists and I shook them off as she rounded the front of the throne. "No one saw me." She glanced up and me, saw my expression and grinned. "That impressive, huh?"

It _was_ impressive, but it also made me feel uncomfortable about the fact I would have just ploughed through them with a shotgun.

We both set to work on my ankles. The rope felt like nylon and just had absolutely no give whatsoever. Neither of us could get a grip on the knots. "It's no use!" I said, sitting up. "We need to find something to cut them with." She was still wearing her belt bag. "Is there anything in there?"

She rifled through it, and I caught sight of a water bottle. I grabbed it out and drank deeply. Sam raised her eyebrows at how thirsty I was, but shook her head. "Nothing sharp enough to cut rope with," she said, and looked around. "Hey, you reckon it would burn?"

I coughed; I'd been drinking too fast. "With _those_ fires? Yes."

She looked back at the doorway, and then at one of the ropes that had bound my hands. Taking it, she said, "Be right back."

She was limping a little as she ran. I was watching her and worrying when she stopped dead in her tracks in the centre of the room. She stood there for a second, and then hurriedly skidded to crouch against the pedestal.

Natla's silhouette appeared up the stairs in the doorway. She was holding some bundles of fabric.

My heart pounded against my ribs: Sam! It was an afterthought that I realised my hands were unbound, so I quickly put them over the side of the throne, hiding my wrists behind the spine. With any luck it was dark enough back there that she wouldn't be able to see.

As Natla rounded the pedestal to approach me, Sam crept around it, always keeping it between her and Natla.

Natla approached me, stopped and smiled. "We've found Samantha."

My heart was beating so forcefully that the veins in my temples were throbbing. I wondered if she could see them. Did she already know Sam was in here, after all?

Rather than elaborate, she shook out some of the fabric in her hands. It was a robe similar to hers, but much smaller. It wouldn't have fit me, not across the shoulders. "Do you think this is her size?" Natla looked down at it. She put that on over own forearm and held out the other. That particular one looked as if it would fit me. "What do you think?" she asked, as if she cared about my answer.

Over her shoulder, I could see Sam tip-toe up to the doorway and corner-check it. Obviously seeing nothing, she continued onto the stairwell. "I don't think red's my colour," I said, nearly too distracted to answer at all.

Natla looked amused. "I don't think you really know what your colours are. Try it on," she said, but didn't make any move to unbind me. "You might find it really suits you." I had a feeling she wasn't even talking about colours.

With Sam gone, I was able to breathe more easily. "Honestly? I'd rather be naked than wear a single thread of your clothes."

She raised an eyebrow. "Well, that can certainly be arranged," she said. "I don't think my men would complain, and I certainly wouldn't." She gave me that sultry half-smile again. It always struck to the core of me. "Aren't you wondering how we found your girlfriend?"

I didn't want to discuss it, in case Natla _did_ know she was here. "I'm wondering why you want to play dress-ups."

She began to fold up the robes, clearly taking care with how she rolled the fabric. "Well, before we can get to work on our armies, we need to inaugurate both of you. It's a fairly simple ceremony."

"Great, I just love parties," I said dryly.

She stopped for a moment and gave me a strange look.

I looked straight back at her.

"When I left this room, you were about five minutes away from falling absolutely to pieces. I left you alone to reflect on what you'd just discovered about yourself, and yet somehow you've turned yourself completely around." She narrowed her eyes at me. "Why is that?"

In the doorway, I saw Sam creep back in, complete with burning rope. She snuck behind one of the pillars lining the walls of the room and ducked out of sight. The light from the Scion shone all over the front of the pillar, completely concealing any sign of her.

Natla saw my line of sight and twisted to briefly look. She didn't see anything. "She's here, isn't she?" she said when she turned back to me.

Despite the fact my throat was so tight I could barely breathe, I managed to keep my expression completely neutral. "Yes, Natla," I said, trying to sound as sarcastic as possible. "She walked right past all your men, came in here and untied me." I looked pointedly down at my bound ankles. I noticed Natla did, as well. "But thanks for letting me know that you actually _don't_ have her."

Natla smiled slightly. "Well played," she said. "You're right, I don't have her. But I will. We're watching every airport in Northern Africa."

I saw Sam move between the pillars as the shadow of the Scion rotated past her.

"The next question is," Natla said, approaching the throne, "what exactly is the best way to get you both to cooperate?"

Sam stuck her head out beside the pillar and mouthed, 'Chocolate' at me. God, I loved her so much. This would just be unbearable without her.

At my silence, Natla tilted her head and considered me. "You know, I might be going about this the wrong way," she said at last. "Samantha's quite the camera girl, isn't she? If we dangle the right bait, I'm sure she'd surface." She took a deep breath and called, "Anders!"

I wasn't sure what that meant until a man came jogging up the stairs, who I presumed to be 'Anders'. "Ma'am?"

"Bring me Ms. Croft's belongings," she told him, still looking at me. He disappeared and reappeared very shortly with my belt bag, which he handed to her. She nodded appreciatively at him, and then opened it as he left. All my belongings must have been searched, because my mobile wasn't in the waterproof bag anymore. She took it out and held it at me. "Shall we give Samantha a call?"

She unlocked my phone, selected Sam's number and put the phone to her ear.

I saw Sam panic, and for a second I wondered if perhaps she forgot to turn her phone on silent. Fortunately, it didn't ring. She relaxed.

Natla shrugged. "Well, that's interesting. I would have thought she'd answer a call from you."

"She's not stupid, Natla. She knows you'll have all my things."

Natla pursed her lips. "Well, we can always email her a video clip," she said. She removed her belt and for a moment I thought she meant to undress. However, she simply tied a thick knot in it and approached me. "Open," she said. "Unless you'd like me to get a selection of my finest men and have them do it for me."

I did put up a cursory struggle, but let her put the knot in my mouth and gag me with the belt. My hands were free, I thought. She would notice if she got too close, but I felt comforted by the fact that if she tried anything too serious, I at least had some chance of defending myself.

I could see Sam behind the pillar. She held up the rope to show me: most of it had burnt through. There was only a small amount left; we were running out of time.

Natla held the phone toward me and selected video. I heard it begin to record. "Samantha," she said. "Lara and I are waiting for you." She was right up close to me. "And I think I've done quite enough waiting over the years to use the Heart again. Either you phone Lara's cell within the next three hours and hand yourself in, or I will let my men take turns on her, one by one, and they won't stop until you've surrendered yourself."

She delivered the whole threat with such casual indifference that I could barely believe what I was hearing. How could a _woman_ so easily order anything like that? It was absolutely sickening.

She saw my expression, and her dark smile deepened. "I don't think Lara likes the sound of that, do you, Lara?"

I just glared at her over the top of the phone.

She stopped recording, tapped the screen a few times and then lowered the phone. "Sent," she said, and leant forwards to remove her belt from my mouth.

I practically spat it out at her. "You _are_ a monster," I hissed. "How can you possibly think that I would ever do anything to help you at all, ever, if you did that to me?"

She smiled faintly. "Experience," she said. "Your memories of it would fade over time, and you would see that it was necessary for me to recreate Atlantis. Eventually you will forgive me and understand it's for the greater good." She ran her fingertips around the edges of my face almost tenderly. "It won't be pleasant for me to watch, either," she said, and bent down toward me.

"Get away from me," I warned her, pressing the back of my head against the throne.

She just smiled and pressed her lips against mine.

That was it. I swung my hands around from behind the throne and pushed her roughly away. She stood back, surprised, until she looked at my free hands. Her brow lowered.

At that second, the whole room began to shake.

Natla stepped aside, turning back towards the pedestal. Sam was standing there with the burning rope looped over her arm and three separate Scion fragments in her hands.

She'd disconnected the Scion fragments from each other, and the earth was quaking.

"She _is_ here!" Natla said, looking back angrily at me for a moment, dumping the fabric and the phone and then rushing toward Sam with her long robe trailing behind her.

"Sam!" I yelled, desperate to get up and help her, but still tied by my ankles to the throne.

Sam looked from the Scion fragments to Natla, and threw them as far as she could across the room. Predictably, Natla went after them, and Sam came running up to me.

There was hardly any burning rope left, but she managed to free both my ankles. I stood, kicking the embers from my boots.

I looked over to see where Natla was, and Sam took my hand. "Come on!" She showed me what was in her palm: she still had one of the fragments, and the glow was fast dying from it. Around us, debris was falling from the ceiling as the room fell into darkness without the Scion lighting it.

I picked up my phone and then grabbed my bag from where Natla had dropped it, fastening it around my middle. At full pelt, we ran toward the door.

"You _idiots_!" Natla was yelling after us. "Get them!"

Several of the men had come running up the stairs to see what all the commotion was. With the ceiling falling around them, though, instead of looking at us, they were looking upward.

One of the huge doors broke off its hinges as we ran toward it, and fell directly on the whole group of them. Unfortunately, that also meant it obstructed our path. I put a boot against it and pushed it off the last hinge, and then we both jumped on top of it and sprinted down the shallow stairs. Behind us, there was a really strange sound that reminded me of the sound sails made on a yacht when you switched their direction in the wind. When I looked back over my shoulder, Natla was above us.

She was above us, because an _enormous_ pair of featherless wings had sprouted from her back and she was moving through the air. With the light from the fire on them, I could see every vein and artery running through the webbing; it reminded me of the sinew and muscle visible on the mummies.

After everything I had seen, I wasn't surprised. It made sense: how else would she have been able to get down from the mountains in Peru so easily? Despite not being surprised, I _was_ still worried about the logistical nightmare of trying to outrun someone who could fly.

Sam saw it, too. "Oh, my God!" she yelled. "What's next, laser beams for eyes?"

The long, tall corridors I had been carried through earlier were lined with men. Fortunately, the men were equally as concerned about the fact the whole place was collapsing as they were about the fact we were escaping. However, some of them still were willing to try shooting at us.

My belt bag had all the weapons removed, but fortunately still contained the grapple gun. We had to evade the gunfire, but when the whole floor of the corridor fell out, giving way to bubbling lava and radiating heat we were the ones who were able to swing across it while they all fell to their deaths.

Natla was shouting behind us, but I was too focused on getting both of us from one chunk of floor to the next while debris fell all around us and bullets skimmed past our heads.

At what I thought might be the entrance to the city of Atlantis, two enormous triangular doors were shut fast. We couldn't open them, and because of their shape they weren't breaking when debris was falling on them. We felt all around the doors.

"How do we get out?" Sam was asking me frantically.

"I don't know!" I told her, looking over my shoulder as Natla glided down the collapsing corridor toward us. I tried to feel where the mechanism in the door was. "I don't know, just push everything, all the symbols, try pushing them!"

Natla landed behind us and watched us fumble with the door for a moment. "It's over," she said, and then took several long strides up to us and lifted Sam off the ground by the back of her jacket with one hand, throwing her back towards the lava.

Time slowed down to an absolutely standstill as I saw her slip over the edge. " _SAM_!" I shrieked, and ran toward where she had fallen, but Natla stepped between us. I tried to push past her anyway, but she didn't move.

"I spent _centuries_ restoring this place," she said. "You have ruined all my hard work it in a matter of minutes." She walked me backward until I was pressed against the door. "Just give it to me!"

For a minute I didn't know what she meant, I couldn't think at all. There was lava below us and Sam had just been knocked into it. Maybe she was alright. She might be on a ledge below, or have been knocked onto a lower level… I had to find out, I just had to go and find her—

"Lara!" she yelled, and grabbed the base of my neck. "Give the fragment to me!"

"Sam had it," I yelled back at her. "And you just knocked her into the lava!"

With her other hand, she pried apart my clenched fists and went through my belt bag and pockets. It soon became clear I was telling the truth, so she released me with a tremendous slap across my face. I fell and my vision greyed as I struggled to stay conscious. My ears were ringing. I couldn't pass out now, I just couldn't… not while I still needed rescue Sam. Because she'd still be alive and need to be rescued, I told myself. This can't be how it ends for us!

Natla walked over to the edge and leant over while I battled to stand up. If I gave her a really good shove, maybe she'd fall in?

As I staggered toward her, I saw a hand reach up from one of the crumbling edges and grab her long robe and pull the train down. I drew a sharp breath: Sam was alive!

Natla saw it, too, and bent down over the side to grab Sam in order to take the Scion fragment. I reached them just as a huge tongue of flame swept up Natla's gown. I stepped back away from the ferocity of it, shielding my face.

Natla shouted and stood up, trying desperately to remove the robe, but it was too late. She was already completely immersed in flame and burning at the same speed Tihocan and Larson had.

As she flailed and clawed at herself, I reached down over the edge and took Sam's hand, pulling her up onto the walkway. Natla's burning body fell over the top of us into the lava.

Her screams had the same unholy sound as the centaurs': they sounded like they weren't of this world, penetrating my ears and my brain.

Standing on the edge and clutching each other and our ears, we watched her scream and writhe and sink underneath the molten waves.

To the other side of us, the violent shaking had caused one of the big stone doors to fall flat on the walkway, providing us with an escape route.

Sam looked from the lava to me, complete shock evident on her face.

She was shaking. "Oh, my God, We did it!" she said, and then a smile slowly grew across her face as she gaped at me. "I did it."


	35. Chapter 35

"I always seem to end up carrying you." I said, laughing. "And you're not even drunk this time!"

Sam was on my back with her legs dangling either side of my hips and the camera pointed over my shoulder. The entrance to Atlantis had been through a network of mines, and it was all uphill on the way out. After we'd fled the area that was collapsing, Sam had stopped me, spun me around and hopped up on my back. Since she'd rescued me and killed Natla, I figured giving her a piggyback to spare her the discomfort of walking any further on her ankle was the least I could do.

It didn't really hit me until we'd put some distance between us and the triangular doors: it was actually over!

I just felt so incredibly exhilarated realising that we'd managed to do it. It was the same feeling I'd had watching the Yamatai island disappear on the horizon as I lay on my side on the PT boat. Waves weren't capsizing us, storms weren't electrocuting us – we'd escaped. And we'd escaped again, this time saving everyone. No one was chasing us through the mines. We were free and the world was safe. I could walk as slowly as I liked up these shafts and it wouldn't make one bit of difference.

It was surreal, though. So sudden that I couldn't really believe it was over. I spent a few minutes worrying that perhaps Natla _wasn't_ dead and _would_ come after us. If that was the case then by keeping a fragment of the Scion we'd basically painted big red targets on ourselves. That couldn't happen, though, could it? I had such a vivid memory of watching her sink into the molten lava.

No, I thought, don't think like that. It's okay, you can relax: we've done it!

Sam tapped the side of my head. "Hey, I asked you a question," she said. I hadn't heard it. She held the camera at arms' length in front of us, pointed at both our faces. "The whole me rescuing you thing and the fact you're carrying me, does this make you _my_ sidekick?"

The LCD was twisted towards us and I could see our faces in it. "If I'm carrying you, doesn't that mean you're the damsel in distress?"

"Whatever," she said, pulling the camera back. "I'm totally Tom Hanks from Saving Private Ryan. I came all this way to save you. It was epic."

"You know he dies in that movie, right?" I said over my shoulder. "It was one of Roth's favourites."

She winced. "Sorry."

It actually didn't hurt, not as much as it used to. Especially not given how great I was feeling. I shook my head at her. "No, it's okay."

She was silent for a few minutes after that, her arms over my shoulders and linked at my collarbones. She'd rested her chin on them, the camera pointed forwards and lighting our passage through the shafts.

"We totally blindsided her," she said eventually. "I was so sure she would be waiting for me."

I thought about what had just happened. It had been a surprise to me, too, but I supposed it made sense. "Natla really only talked about you being some tool to control me," I said. "She had me completely pinned, but I think she didn't even really consider that you were a person in your own right."

"Well, my lecturers at UCL would totally have given me a first."

It was a rather odd thing for her to say. Sam has basically been locked in endless battle with the media staff at uni for the whole of her Bachaelor's. Their general opinion of her was that she was a spoilt rich girl from a media empire who thought she knew everything, and her opinion of them was that they were mired down in old frameworks of analysis and needed to be shaken up. As a result her grades had never been that great, even though she won a couple of external awards for student documentaries. I didn't understand the connection between that and Natla, though.

"Over what, you filming your way through to rescue me?"

She shook her head. "At college my lecturers were always going on about being 'invisible'. Like, you should never think about the fact there's a camera or someone behind it. The best operator is one that the audience doesn't even think about."

I grinned. "Well, you got it, then." I did glance at the camera beside my cheek, though. "At least where Natla was concerned. The rest of the time you've got that thing pointed at yourself, too."

She grinned. "I kind of like a visible narrator, though. Raw footage makes Reality TV more accessible, like the viewer could actually be there with the people they're watching. Although you need to be careful that the camera isn't too unsteady when you switch it between…" She stopped herself. "I'm doing it again, aren't I?"

I was chuckling. Her obsession with the little device in her hands never failed to completely endear her to me.

"Are you _laughing_ at me?" she asked, pretending to be angry. She smacked me lightly on the head.

"Watch it or I'll drop you," I told her.

"I won't let go," she warned me. "I'll pull you down with me!"

"I hope you do."

I could _feel_ her smile brightly beside my ear. It made me giddy, just knowing I'd caused it.

The entrance to the mines was on the side of a small island in the white sandstone cliffs. It looked like a brand new site: the posts supporting the mouth still had the chalk on them from the log yard they'd been cut in. At least fifteen aluminium boats were tethered on a makeshift wharf, but there was no one anywhere. Other than the mine and the wharf, nothing about the island suggested people had ever lived on it or walked on it.

We selected one of the boats, and I eased Sam very gently down into the base of it then untied us and pushed away from the dock.

The motor still had plenty of petrol, and it only took me a few pulls to start it and then we were on our way.

The weather was just beautiful – it must have been mid-twenties and not a single cloud in the sky. It was so odd to think that this could have been the day that Natla went to war against the rest of the world. It was too peaceful and quiet for that, the kind of day where you just want to sleep in a patch of sunlight.

That certainly seemed to be Sam's plan. She lay back and put her arms behind her head. "I'm totally regretting not putting our suitcases in that helicopter right now," she said. "This is great weather for sunbaking."

"Well, it was either the suitcase or you," I told her. "I'm pretty certain a suitcase wouldn't have been much help against Natla, so I'm comfortable with my choice."

"I don't know," Sam said. "I think you in that gold bikini would have been a pretty formidable weapon against her."

I made a face, remembering that last kiss Natla forced on me. "Ugh, like I'd want to _encourage_ that. I _still_ can't believe I nearly went there. Why didn't you stop me?"

I had expected her to fire back some chirpy reply, but she didn't speak straight away. Her voice had lost that playfulness when she finally did speak. "What could I say? 'Um, Lara, don't sleep with her, sleep with me?'"

My heart skipped a beat. It made me both very nervous and very excited at the same time that she would say that to me. "Yes, that would have just about done the trick."

We watched each other for a few seconds. Her cheeks were pink and, God, the way she was looking at me… my stomach fluttered. With her leaning backward like that, I could have just crawled over to her and sat across her hips like I had in the hotel room in Athens.

Except I was steering this bloody boat.

She realised that and remained sitting where she was against the bow. What she _did_ do, however, was hoist herself up slightly, taking off her jacket and then lifting her t-shirt over her head, tossing it toward me.

I caught it automatically. She winked at me and lay back in the sun again. Her bra looked like something flimsy from Ann Summers and it made my heart race. She was so close I could see every detail of her dusty skin in the sun, including the colour of her nipples through the almost transparent lace. She could have used a good wash, I decided, and imagined stripping that bra off in a steam-filled bathroom and then stepping into—

The boat stopped suddenly and I lurched forward, nearly on top of her. We'd hit a sandbank because I wasn't concentrating and had steered us too close to another tiny island. God, how completely embarrassing. It was so obvious what had just happened.

She smirked at me as I manoeuvred us off the bank and continuing on toward the town I could see ahead of us. As we approached it, the water around the jetty was peppered with boats and Sam had to put her top back on.

Despite being perfectly able to climb out of the boat herself, she insisted I help her. The footpaths were also nice and flat as well, but I ended up carrying her again, anyway. I was acutely aware of the fact that scandalous bra and its contents were pressed against my shoulder blades as we went looking for somewhere to stay.

Sam was pointing at a large building. "That looks like a hotel," she said. "You have no idea how much I'm fantasising about a shower right now."

Well, I did, actually. I wondered if her fantasies were anything like mine.

I still had no idea which town we were in. It hardly mattered, though: we were safe!

The receptionist gave us the strangest expression as we entered the lobby. I can only imagine how we looked, and I still had Sam on my back. I walked us over to the table.

Sam put her credit card on the counter. "Anything that has a spa," she said. "By the way, where are we?"

The woman was staring at us, but did actually check the computer for what was available. "There's a villa free," she said. "And this is Hotel Olympia."

"No, like, which town are we in? This is still Croatia, right?" Sam tapped in her PIN as the clerk gave her the keypad. The woman really looked as if she wasn't sure whether or not to take us seriously.

"Ignore her, the villa will be fine." I said, figuring our GPS was probably working and we could check our location ourselves later.

The villa was more than fine – it was gorgeous. It was on the edge of one of those sandstone cliffs, overlooking the rocky shoreline and yachts sailing in the distance. The water was such a deep, rich blue it made the sky look washed out. Some sort of vine was blossoming all over the stone walls and we had to brush it aside to get in the doorway. It was a nice touch.

Sam slid off my back and, as usual, hobbled off to explore what she'd paid for. I made a beeline for the sink and had a couple of glasses of water. I then poked about in the fridge and cupboards to see what complimentary food they had. There wasn't anything at all in the kitchen, but there _was_ a room service menu on the dining table in the main room.

When Sam came back into the main room, she'd taken off her jacket and her bag and was barefoot apart from the straps on her ankle. I actually thought it looked like she'd tried to fix her hair and wash her face, too. I wondered if she'd cleaned herself up just for me. I would have maybe have joked about it, but my stomach was rumbling and I could hear water running.

"I'm absolutely starving," I told her, showing her the menu. "Want to order something really terrible?"

She flipped through it, but I couldn't help but notice she was peeking at me from under her lashes. "Sure, but don't you want a bath, first? It overlooks the ocean..."

I _did_ want a bath. "Do I really have to choose only one or the other?"

I left the menu with her and followed the sound of running water to the bathroom. It was a deep spa with a ring of circular seat around it. While I was inspecting the jets, I caught sight of myself in the mirror over the vanity. I looked – and this wasn't exaggerating – like something out of a war movie. The socket of one of my eyes was mottled purple and yellow and my skin was filthy. I took off my t-shirt to examine myself and found bruises and a long scrape on one of my arms. Those men who carried me from Egypt to Croatia must just about have practically been playing catch with me.

"Hello?" I heard Sam say from the other room. "Yeah, Villa Five. Can we have two servings of fish and chips? And can you, like, double-deep fry it or something?" she paused. "That's ages, can you make it quickly? My friend is totally going to start picking off seagulls from the cliff and chewing on the vines if you don't get here soon." I heard the beep of the cordless being hung up. "Forty-five minutes!" she called to me. "You can do it!"

I walked back into the main room. "It's probably going to take that long for the bath to fill up, anyway. It's huge!"

"Wow," Sam said when she saw me, completely disregarding the fact I'd spoken and staring at my torso. "You are _beat up_."

I looked down at myself. "I know..." I said. "It must mostly have happened while I was unconscious. I'm a bit stiff, but otherwise it doesn't really hurt."

She walked around me. I felt tentative fingers touch a spot on my back. I flinched. "You should see this bruise," she said, leading me back into the bathroom and turning me in the mirror to show it to me. It looked like a boot print; you could even see the shape of the tread.

We made eye contact in the mirror.

I swallowed, and looked down. "How's your back?"

She pulled her own top off and turned away from me so I could see it. It was very red, much redder than it had been right after the bridge had hit her. Scabs had already formed but the edges looked a little puffy. She'd have to be careful to make sure it didn't get infected, I thought. "Does it hurt?"

Rather than answer, she disappeared into the main room and returned with the half-finished pack of codeine. "Not as much as it probably should," she said, waving it, and then grinned. "Take some."

"Pusher," I accused her, but accepted a couple of them and stuck my mouth in the flow of the water from the tap to wash them down.

When I stood back up again, she was facing me, leaning her hip against the vanity. "It's so weird," she said. "That we're doing this."

I froze. "Doing what?"

"Like, we just saved the world. Seriously, we just saved it. We did all this amazing stuff and now we're just playing around in a hotel like we always do, like it never happened." I released a breath I wasn't aware I'd been holding, and must have looked quite relieved because she asked. "What was that for?"

I shrugged. "I just thought you meant..." I didn't know how to complete the sentence without actually verbalising what we hadn't really talked about.

A little smile appeared on her lips and she took a step toward me. Putting a hand on the rise of my hip, she made eye contact with me again. "You mean this?"

She was so close to me, that when she breathed out I could feel it on the skin of my cheeks. "Yeah," I said.

She looked down again toward my stomach, and ran the backs of her fingers along it. While she was looking away from me, I was able to watch the corners of her lips curving into a cheeky grin. Her thumb ran along the waist of my cargos, slipping ever so briefly inside the hem. When I drew a sharp breath, she looked right back at me and caught my eyes. While she had them, she undid my belt and pulled it off without looking away from me.

Then, she put her hands on either side of my hips, and began to descend to my feet, her palms trailing along the outside of my thighs.

I inhaled a gulp of air, terrified of what might be about to happen. It was only when her hands made it all the way to my boots and pulled at the laces that I realised that _that_ was what she was planning on doing: taking my boots off.

I laughed a little from relief. "Oh, God..." I said, and put a hand over my eyes.

She helped me take both them and my socks off, and then stood back up along my body, pressing my lower back against the vanity.

"I know what you were thinking," she said in a sing-song voice, fiddling with the button on my trousers. I don't know if she actually meant to undo it, but I found even the suggestion that she might overpowering. She only needed to lean in a little in order for her lips to touch mine, but she pulled back before they actually met – on purpose.

She was about five seconds short of me just pushing her down on the tiles and ravaging her, if she kept that up.

Yet, this was _Sam_ I was seriously about to tear the clothes off of. My Sam, my crazy camera girl who drank too much and was still afraid of the dark. I still found that so hard to comprehend. A few weeks ago she was like a sister to me, and now she couldn't be further from one.

"What are we doing?" I asked her as she kissed along my neck, not sure I wanted the answer. I should count just myself lucky that she was reciprocating my attraction and leave it at that.

Sam found that spot under my ear that I just loved and I closed my eyes as she kissed it, hoping she wouldn't speak. She did, though, her lips still against my skin. "Whatever I can get away with before you stop me," she murmured.

 _That_ actually did make me push her away slightly. "What do you mean?"

She pulled back so she could look at me. "Come on," she said. "Two or three weeks ago you wouldn't have looked twice at me. I'm not stupid enough to think this will last."

I frowned at her. There was a lot in that sentence to process, and I didn't know where to start. "Sam," I said. "I don't–"

She lifted her hand from my hips and held it up between us, interrupting me. "It's okay, though, I'll take whatever I can get."

She leant into me again, but I didn't let her kiss me. "What makes you think I'm not into this? Sam, I..." I took a breath. "I said I love you, and I meant it. I really meant it. I don't know how else to say it."

She was completely serious. "Yeah, you say that, but how much of this is Yamatai? You're different since then. What happens when it all goes back to normal?"

"We just _saved the world_ ," I said. "I don't think it _does_ go back to normal."

She looked down at were her hand was on my stomach, tracing the skin around my scar. "I love you so much, Lara," she said, as if she was desperate to get it out before she lost her nerve. "But like two or three weeks ago when the media was all over the two of us, you were so freaked out by it." I thought that was an exaggeration, but in a sense she was right. "And before that you'd never looked at another girl in your life. What if it goes away and we totally mess up our friendship because of it?"

I didn't have much to say to that. I _hadn't_ really looked at another girl before her and Natla. I spent a few seconds worrying that it might actually have been Natla's doing somehow, but then I was attracted to Sam before I'd crossed paths with her so that couldn't be it. I wondered if I'd ever have thought to look at Sam that way without the media pushing me to do it.

When I didn't say anything she pressed her lips together. "You see what I mean?"

But whether or not the media did it, or Natla did it, or somehow Yamatai did it, I _was_ looking at her like that. We _were_ standing here in some random hotel in Croatia, taking each other's clothes off and touching each other. I liked it, it turned me on and I wanted more of it, whatever it meant about me.

"You should try living it," I said, sighing. "I always just figured I was too obsessed with archaeology and finding Yamatai to bother too much with relationships and that's why they never worked out. Now I have this whole other layer of possibility to consider: maybe I wasn't ever really that interested in my boyfriends to begin with."

Over Sam's shoulder, I could see the tub filling perhaps a little too high. I stepped past her and out of the conversation to jog over and turn the taps off. Putting my hand in the bath to test the temperature, I then shook the water off. "It's ready."

She had turned and was leaning on the vanity. "Are you _really_ attracted to women, though? Really, not just messing around?"

Women in general? I wasn't sure. Certain women, perhaps. I had definitely been very attracted to Natla, and when I thought of Sam sliding down my body before— _yes_. Even looking at her in that bra I knew the answer. I nodded, stepping up onto the edge of the spa and taking my bra off.

She looked so relieved. "It felt like you were into it," she said, watching my bra fall to the ground. "In that club and in Athens."

And right now, I thought. "I was." I took a breath, wondering if I should continue. "I would have kept going in Athens."

That made her blush and look at the tiles for a moment. "You were drunk," she reminded me.

I took that opportunity to slip my trousers and knickers off and hop into the tub.

"But I'm not drunk now, am I?" I splashed water on my face. She was just leaning on the vanity, staring at me with her mouth open. There was a hot blush on her cheeks. "You just going to stand there gaping at me, or are you going to hop in and join me?"

The invitation made her breathe so quickly. Her ribcage rose and fell, pushing against that tiny bra. "Lara, you drive me absolutely crazy," she said, finally. "It was okay while you were obsessing over Yamatai. We were both working and completely distracted. But now that you're not?" She was a little breathless. "When you look at me like that, I just want to jump you. Are you sure you really want that?"

Seeing her so completely flustered was a total turn on, that much I was sure of. "If you want to jump me, come here and do it."

She didn't move at all for a second, and then within the space of another three of them she'd shed her bra and her trousers and stepped into the spa. The water swished around me as she pushed me against the backrest and sat heavily across my lap, a knee on either side of my thighs.

"This is a bad idea," she said, and then kissed me deeply. I wrapped my hands around the small of her back to pull her against me, our skin sliding together in the water. The feeling of being naked, wet and against her was intoxicating.

She slid down me for a moment, putting her face beneath the water to kiss my breasts. When she surfaced again and stood over me, her breasts were right next to my face so I let one push into my mouth. From the sound she made, I thought I'd probably made the right choice. I smiled into them. "It probably _is_ a bad idea," I said, switching to the other one, "but I've been gagging for it for ages and if you stop now I might have to kill you."

Sam raised her eyebrows. "Now, coming from you, that's quite a threat!"

I stood up in the water against her, snaking my hands from her back down to cup her rear. "Better do what I say, then," I warned her, grinning, and pressed our bodies together. It was so odd to be completely flat against her and have nothing poking me in the stomach. Normally at this point I'd be worrying where we were going to get a condom from. Not needing to look for one seemed too convenient, somehow, like we were cheating.

She saw me smile. "You can't grin like that and not share."

"This is just different," I said, smiling even more as she indulgently filled her hands with my breasts. "There's nothing to reach way down and grab onto."

In reply, she took my hands and put them on her own breasts. "Sure there is," she said. "And they don't get you pregnant."

Since they were in my hands, I kneaded them as I laughed with her. She was taking deep breaths as I did it, eyes veiled. I wanted to explore more of her than just her breasts, so I left them and ran my hands over her middle. I stroked across her flat stomach and hip bones, and then slid my hands over her waist. I glanced down between us at the shape her hips and thighs were making in the water. Sam saw where I was looking and pushed me back to sit on the seat again and straddled me.

I leaned upwards to kiss her and she stopped me. "I want to see your face," she whispered, and then took one of my hands and slowly guided it between her legs.

It was terrifying, every millisecond of it, before I finally touched her there. I wasn't sure what I had been afraid of, though. She showed me what she wanted me to do with her own hand over mine, and then let it fall away as I followed her silent instructions.

Bracing herself on my shoulders, she took some deep, halting breaths. Her eyes fell closed for a moment as she leaned heavily into my hand while I moved it against her. When she opened them again and looked at me... that was hotter than all of it put together. I could see how I was making her feel from the expression on her face. Every sigh she made, every rasping breath she took, I could see what I was doing for her. When I reached up and circled her breast with my other hand, the look she gave me… God, it was doing it for _me_. If my hands hadn't been spoken for I'd have put one between my own legs. She sat inward and put her forehead to mine, rocking against me and breathing quickly. Each breath she took I felt in my core. I sat firmly on the seat, desperately wishing I was sitting over a jet.

Her lips parted, she whispered, "Lara..." and then she was pushing her body against mine, grinding down into my lap and crying out. I held her against me.

She drew a long breath and released it, and then sat back away from me. Rather than say anything, she just smiled and kissed me slowly.

I shifted restlessly on the seat, and she grinned against my lips. "Okay, okay," she murmured. "I get it. 'Gagging for it'."

I took her hand with the intention of putting it directly in my lap as quickly as possible, but she pulled it back and shook her head. Instead, she sat me up on the edge of the spa and slid her torso in between my legs. I took a ragged breath, uncomfortable. God, I wanted it, but it seemed like such a confronting thing to begin with. Sam didn't seem to share any of my reservations at all, kissing from my breasts to my bellybutton and then continuing en route downward. Before she began, she looked up at me and winked. Just that made my breath catch in my throat, but not nearly as much as it caught there when she actually put her lips against me.

I don't even know what sound I made. I'm sure people outside the villa would have heard it, but I didn't care at all. The only two things I could focus on were Sam's lips and tongue and what they were doing to me. It was almost too much to look down between my breasts and see her head in my lap, I had to close my eyes so it wasn't over before I had the opportunity to appreciate it. She knew what she was doing, that was for sure. At some point I realised she was using a hand, as well, but I was too consumed by the feeling to bother trying to figure out exactly what she was doing and how.

She did pause briefly to change position, and when she did she said, "God, Lara, the sounds you're making... it's so fucking hot."

"Keep going," I breathed, "Just keep going."

She did and I arched back, holding her head against me with one of my hands. It had been a long time since anyone had done this for me and I'd almost forgotten how much I liked it. I wanted it to go on forever, but in the end there was only so much I could take. She took one of my hands in hers and held it as I came against her; at that moment my whole world was reduced to the tiny nuances of her lips and tongue buried in between my legs.

When we both slipped back into the water, she put her arms around me, kissing me briefly before resting her head on my shoulder.

I lay back against the edge of the spa with my eyes closed. My heart was still pounding.

I've just slept with my best friend, I thought, I think this is where things get very complicated. I probably should have cared, but at that point there wasn't anything I particularly cared about beyond having some dinner and perhaps skipping around the villa like a love-struck teenager.

 _I love you_ , I thought peacefully to myself. _You don't believe it at all, but I do_.

"How long do you want to stay here before we go back?" Sam asked me. She'd been so quiet I'd wondered if she'd actually fallen asleep on me.

"To Japan?"

"No, to Atlantis." When I lifted my head up to look at her, she snorted. "Yeah, Japan."

"To the real world," I said at length, laying my head back again. "Ugh. I have at least a dozen Yamatai artefacts I need to study and catalogue."

She shot me a look. "Oh, Sweetie, I feel so sorry for you," she said sarcastically. "I have about fifty hours of footage I need to cut and edit. I win."

"I think I'd prefer to leave the holiday until after the work's done," I said at last. "Let's go back and get all of this out of the way. Then we can go somewhere really nice that we haven't been before."

 _That_ set her off. "Just like old times," she said with a big smile on her face. "Maybe Australia? Or New Zealand? Those guys from the club were from there. Apparently it's totally beautiful, heaps of film studios are setting up shop on South Island."

I wrinkled my nose. "Not many ruins, though."

Sam grinned. "Good, I won't have to keep pulling at your leash to get you away from them." I could tell I wasn't going to have much luck talking her out of it. Well, it didn't matter. I didn't need to turn _every_ holiday into a study expedition.

I was busy relaxing and imagining palm-lined beaches when Sam exhaled. "I keep wondering if we just made a giant mistake," she said. "I mean, obviously we totally wanted it, but what happens now?"

"Round two?" I asked innocently.

She laughed, but it faded quickly. "Hey, didn't we order some dinner? What time is it?"

I sat up. "That's right," I stepped out of the tub, slinging a bathrobe around me and tying the sash. I couldn't see a clock, so I unzipped my bag and looked around for a phone. It was Pierre's phone I picked up, and there was a message from Aurelie on it. I winced.

"It's nearly half five," I shouted back to Sam.

I should probably call that poor woman, I thought. But not now. Now, I could smell fish and chips. I followed my nose to the door and found a tray was already there waiting for us. The attendant had helpfully hung a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on our door, because we hadn't remembered to.

I reached up and put a hand to my forehead, scrunching up my face. How incredibly embarrassing, she probably heard _everything._ I hoped she hadn't tried to come in.

I took the tray back inside, and Sam was wandering into the main room wearing her own fluffy white bathrobe. She also had the camera in her hands and pointed at me. I put the tray on the table and did a grand reveal for it, removing the cloche.

"Oh, my God," Sam said, zooming right in on the puddles of grease on the plates. "I can practically feel my arteries hardening just looking at it. This stuff is lethal." She pointed at the chips. "We should have used these to kill Natla instead."

I reached over and angled the camera towards me. "You should smell this," I told her imaginary audience. "I think I just put on four or five kilos by inhaling the steam from it."

While I was eating, Sam found the remote from the telly and switched it on, of course finding the most obscure channel on broadcast. I watched her as she munched on chips and analysed some strange medical show set in an Eastern European ER. She had a slight frown on her face as she was probably scrutinising the editing choices the directors had made.

I just slept with you, Sam, I thought. I wondered just how bad a decision that was, and if it really was a mistake. It didn't feel like a mistake, and actually I rather thought I could do with a lot more of it. We'd see, I supposed. I still didn't really know what to make of it.


	36. Chapter 36

Sam's father insisted on chartering us a flight for the following morning.

That evening was a little strange in just how routine it was; we'd fallen asleep together on the couch watching documentaries. We didn't really talk about what had happened, either. I had my arm around her for most of the night, and it was so tantalizingly close to one of her breasts that I wanted to reach just that further and brush over it. I didn't, though.

Even though I promised myself I wouldn't dwell on it, Sam fell asleep before me and all that did was give me ample time to worry that we shouldn't have slept together. She had been in the crook of my arm again, with her hands curled under her chin. I played with her hair as I worried about what would become of us.

I wanted to continue that conversation we had been having just before we'd hopped in the spa. All we'd really talked about my sexuality. Sam hadn't said what she wanted, and I hadn't really said what I wanted. To be honest, I wasn't really sure exactly what I wanted.

I loved her, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind about that. I loved her, and I was really attracted to her. If she were anyone else, it would be really simple. We'd date a bit, sleep together and eventually be recognised as a couple. With Sam, it had happened all around the wrong way: the media had set us up as a couple and now everyone just assumed we were. We were long past the pictures-and-dinner stage, but we had finally slept together.

Was she still my best friend? Were we _actually_ a couple now, or was sex just sex? We'd always snuggled, it was difficult to know if that made shagging the natural next step. Maybe 'friends with benefits' was an actual real situation and not just some man's fantasy.

God, it was so difficult with Sam. She said she loved me and I knew she did, but I had no idea what that meant about us. She'd sleep with anyone who was capable of consenting, and she was absolutely _terrible_ with relationships. I think from memory her longest was about three months and that was only because we'd spent half of that time on a trek in India, during which she'd cheated on him, anyway.

Is that what I really wanted?

I just hoped that whatever happened we could hang on to our strong friendship. Apart from Sam, I didn't really have any family and I just didn't know what would happen if we fell apart. I also really wanted to be _with_ her, whatever incarnation of that I ended up getting. I hope those two things weren't mutually exclusive.

I did eventually end up falling asleep, and was awoken the following morning by the wakeup call I'd ordered to make sure we didn't miss the plane. It was a little redundant, I supposed, since charter flights didn't exactly leave without you.

The private airport was just outside the town we'd been staying in, and the shiny new jet couldn't have looked more out of place amongst the poorly maintained concrete hanger which looked like a throwback to the Soviet era.

We searched around for clothes shops near the airport, but there was absolutely nothing. When I stepped on that plane I probably still looked like something out of Survivor, because even though I'd washed all my clothes and they'd dried overnight they were still torn and stained. My main concern was how Mr. Nishimura would receive us looking like that, but when we got on the plane he wasn't on it, anyway.

One of his staff members apologised on his behalf and added, "He does send his warmest thanks for exposing Natla Technologies and restoring Nishimura Corp's share price, though."

Sam had been really looking forward to seeing him so she could discuss the footage she'd taken of us. "Sure he does," she said bitterly. "I bet I'll even get a Christmas bonus this year."

She didn't want to talk about it and I didn't force her to, even though I really would have like to comfort her. What I _did_ do was take advantage of the best thing about charter planes: internet connectivity for the whole flight.

I had about fourteen thousand emails. Perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly felt that many while I went through them. There weren't many I was really interested in responding to, but I couple of them caught my eye. One of them was from Professor Chamberlain that completely ignored the fact I'd fled the dig on a stolen helicopter. He thanked me for being involved and invited me to apply for a PhD candidature the following semester. I saved it, thinking I was interested to discuss more about my father with him. Natla had never detailed what her involvement with my family was, and since she clearly had a long-standing business relationship with Professor Chamberlain who also new them, I thought he might be able to explain what that connection was.

The next was a short one from Reyes. The wording was absolutely priceless: ' _Hey Lara, I'm sick of these fucking journalists, get Sam to tell her father to stop them from calling. Sam already has plenty of footage of me so they can get the hell out of my face. Also, Alisha says hi, can you please call her when you get a chance."_ I grinned, and tapped out a quick reply to her.

One of the last ones caught me by surprise: it was from Alex's email address. I had a fleeting glimmer of hope that perhaps he'd managed to escape the Endurance after all, but when I opened it, it was just from his parents. They'd invited us to his funeral, which we'd actually missed. We should have been there.

I looked over at Sam who was sitting across from me, thinking I would show her that email. She was staring out the window with her eyes glazed. I shouldn't disturb her, I thought. After everything we'd just done, I wondered what it would feel like to have a father who was mostly indifferent to me and a mother who was probably keeping Lindsay Lohan company in rehab somewhere.

Sam had a lot to lose if something happened to our friendship, too.

She saw me watching me and turned her head toward me. I smiled faintly at her.

She acknowledged my smile, but didn't give me one of her own. "He said I can have the studio for four days," she said. "A week or two would have been better, but there's a new season of some show that wraps up filming on Monday." She looked back out the window. "I bet I'll out-rate them anyway, even with only four days to cut something together."

I almost didn't want to ask about it. "Do they still what that interview with me?"

Sam was looking at me in the reflection of the window. "Yeah, of course. I want some more fillers of you, too. There's whole chunks of what just happened to us where there isn't any footage." When I simply nodded, she frowned, turning properly toward me. "Wait, you don't care?"

I shifted in my seat, thinking. Yamatai felt like a lifetime ago, even though it couldn't have been more than a month. "It won't be live, will it?"

She shook her head. "Probably not, Dad's a bit of a content control freak about stuff to do with the family. He'd never let an interview longer than like five minutes be live." She stopped for a second and thought. "Actually, that's kind of cool. I think he actually did say ' _family_ ' about you," she said, using the Japanese word.

I smiled, but it just reminded me about the unanswered questions I had about Sam and I.

Sam was looking across at me. "You don't seem so happy about that," she observed.

I poked my head around my seat to make sure the flight attendant wasn't anywhere to be found. I couldn't see her. I still didn't really want to be having this conversation here, though. "' _Family_ ' how?"

Sam didn't share any of my concern about the attendant. "To be honest, I kind of already think Dad thinks we've sleeping together for a while. He probably wouldn't have released that photo of us in bed together if he thought it would upset us."

It was a really uncomfortable idea. Mr. Nishimura was really intimidating, and I hadn't actually thought about how he might feel about me dating his daughter. "He didn't say anything, though, did he?"

She shook her head. "No, he wouldn't. I mean, in the long run he might, but otherwise we don't ever really talk about that stuff."

My stomach fluttered. I didn't think she'd even realised what she'd just said. "'The long run'," I repeated.

She swallowed. "Yeah, I mean, I kind of assumed…" I watched her, hanging on what followed. "You know, that it wasn't a one-time thing."

That much I had already gathered. "But what is it, then? Like, are we still friends, or…?"

God, I wanted her to reply and at the same time I completely didn't. She took her sweet time about it, and in the meantime I sat sweating it out. "You mean if we're a couple?" She said eventually. I nodded. "Does that supersede friendship, though? Because you can have a boyfriend for, like, a week, but you usually have a best friend for a lot longer than that." She had a point. "I'm still kind of worried you're going to wake up straight one of these days, and be like, 'Yeah, that was fun but let's just be friends again'."

As much as I couldn't guarantee anything about myself, I doubted I'd be able to look at her in the same way I had a month ago. Not after being with her, and especially not after she'd gone down on me. "I don't think it works like that."

We watched each other for a few moments. I decided all this skirting around the actual point was probably more torturous than any answer she could give me. "I want us to be a couple, Sam." I watched her eyes brighten and a delighted smile rise to her lips. "I don't really know how that will work. I know it just _has_ to, though, because otherwise we're both in trouble."

Her smile faded. "I know," she said. "I kept wondering what would happen if I hit on you and you weren't up for it. I can't lose you."

"So…?"

She grinned broadly, and tossed her hair like she was hitting on someone in a pub. "So, like, you want to have dinner with me sometime? I know this great little place."

That made me laugh, and the relief… I felt like I'd just released a breath I'd been holding for three weeks. I undid my seatbelt and leaned forward toward her, catching her lips in a kiss. She opened hers immediately and it ended up going a bit further than I'd intended. Every time the blade of her tongue touched mine, it reminded me of what she'd been doing with it in the spa. Wow, this had to stop before it went anywhere on her father's plane.

I pulled back, a little breathless. "Okay," I said. "Dinner sounds great."

Sam was still looking at my lips. "On second thoughts, let's skip dinner." She made an attempt to draw me back into the kiss, but I turned my chin. "You're so hot," she said. "You have no idea how hot you are, it's killing me."

"I'm glad you think so," I said, evading another kiss.

"I'm serious, Lara. I should show you all the footage I took of you. You look fucking amazing on camera, and even better in real life."

I did actually want to see that footage, but not at all to scrutinise myself in it. I wanted to know more about this 'setting up scenes' Sam had talked about when she was sneaking past all Natla's men. If she was that good at it, I could probably learn a thing or two from her. She was certainly markedly less torn up than I was after having fought my way past all those men in Yamatai.

"You'll have to show me," I said to her. "There's no reason why I can't bring the artefacts into the studio and we can't work next to each other."

That did stop her attempting to get me into her lap. "You know, that would probably be a great way to film the fillers as well," she said, lighting up. "We could set you up with a desk or something, and you could chat to me while you're cataloguing them. It would give the viewers some insight into the recovery process without even needing to explain it. Actually…" she said, going into the bag she'd put next to her on the seat and pulling the camera out of it, "…we could shoot some stuff now, too."

I sat back in my seat and rolled my eyes. I was smiling, though, glad she'd mostly forgotten about her father. I listened to her questions and answered them, for the most part just watching her. So, we were together. I had a _girl_ friend.

"You know what's really strange," I said, ignoring whatever her last question had been. She kept filming, anyway, waiting for me to reply. "That we don't have to worry at all about coming out."

She snorted. "There you have it folks: Rising Star Archaeologist Lara Croft is gay."

I winced. I still didn't feel like that word described me. "Don't put that in," I told her. "I don't really want people to be discussing my sexuality when I don't even really know what I am."

"Yeah… no way to avoid that," she said, this time looking at me over the LCD. "Hot girl sleeps with best friend. I think people are probably going to be almost more interested in that than the zombie centaurs."

"Can we somehow just not comment on it? At all?"

She flicked her thumb and the red LED stopped flashing. "Like, anything about us? That's going to be kind of hard. There's all sorts of stuff in here that's going to suggest it, even if we don't show it." She pointed at me. "And then there's that photo Dad released."

I picked absently at a hole in the knee of my cargos. "I don't really mind people assuming we're together as sort of a secondary thing. They already do, anyway. I just don't want it to be the topic and I don't want to have to say anything about it. At least, not yet."

She looked sombre. "You do know that's going to make people talk _more_ about it, though, right? If you just said, 'Yeah, I'm gay, deal with it', people would totally cheer you on for like a month or two and then would stop talking about it. If you don't confirm it, you'll have journalists picking over every second of footage and hacking your phone looking for whatever they can use as evidence."

"Guess I'd better be careful what photos I take of you, then."

Her eyes twinkled and the playfulness returned. "Or what photos you get sent."

I actually could completely imagine her sexting me five times a day just to mess about with me. "What if that type of photos _did_ get out? Don't you care what people are saying about you?"

She scoffed. "No. Or I wouldn't have done half the crap I did in boarding school and college." She held her hands up. "It's okay, though, I know you're much more private about stuff like this. I won't try to make out with you in public or anything." She held the camera back up and said before she turned it on, "I can also probably edit out most of the really incriminating footage, as long as it doesn't contain narrative elements."

When we landed and stepped out of the plane, I already decided I didn't want to stay in Tokyo for very long. Being back there was bizarre. I felt a million miles away from everyday life and like I didn't fit in it at all. On the other hand, I didn't want to go back to London, either. My flat still had Alex's server in it and photos of Roth and I everywhere. It wouldn't really be any great drama for me to put them away, but just being in the same places I'd been when they were alive was going to be tough. I'd manage, I supposed. I just wasn't looking forward to it.

I didn't really know where that left me, though. I supposed with Sam's monthly paycheque and Nishimura Corp's retainer in my bank it would be possible for us to live on the road, but I wasn't really sure if that was the solution. At some point I was going to want to settle somewhere between digs.

Maybe we could rent a big old-fashioned house in the English countryside somewhere, away from all the crowds? I'd loved visiting my Aunt in the little hamlet she'd lived in when I was little. The more I thought about that, the more I liked the idea of it. Somewhere near Surrey – it was beautiful and so very quiet around there.

I mentioned it to Sam in the car on the way back to her father's house and she grinned at me. "Wait, we're moving in together already? I haven't even taken you to dinner yet." Given that we'd shared a dorm room in boarding school, I hadn't even considered that the suggestion might come across that way. Before I could feel uncomfortable about it, though, she continued. "But let's be serious, we're always at each other's places anyway. Might as well save a couple of grand."

She was busy doing the rounds of the news websites on her phone, though, and didn't seem to be interested in discussing housing further. "Hey, look at this," she said, and passed her phone over to me. I skimmed the text on the screen. Several other people had come forward with allegations against Natla, and one of them claimed to have information pertaining to how she had been manipulating the stock market. The police had made a statement about reviewing the documents with the view of charging her with a criminal offense.

Natla certainly wasn't in any position to be charged with anything, but it gave _me_ pleasure to see her name continuing to be dragged through the mud.

"Make sure you put in a lot of stuff about her," I told Sam. "Whatever you have."

Sam appeared to remember something. "Oh, my God, that's right," she said, snatching her phone back from me and opening up her email. The video that Natla had taken where she threatened me was there. She pressed play and we re-watched it – I was glad the driver didn't speak much English.

Sam paused it on a frame of me glaring at her. "It doesn't have her face or anything, but it's totally clear that it's her – and she's threatening to have you _gang-raped_. I think the police are about to have a whole lot more to charge her with." She paused. "We can't let this get out before it goes to air, though, or the police won't let us use it."

"She would have done it," I said, reflecting on what had nearly happened. It had been all over so quickly that it was difficult to really comprehend the gravity of everything she'd been planning. "She was dead set on reconquering the old Atlantean empire."

Sam let the phone rest in her lap. "I knew she was serious. When they kidnapped you..." She took a breath. "Lara, I was so scared. Just wait until you see the footage I shot. I'm probably a total sobbing wreck through the whole seven gigs of it. I can't believe I managed to pull myself together, let alone sneak in there and rescue you."

I put a hand on her thigh and she covered it with her own.

Mr. Nishimura wasn't back at the house, either, which wasn't very surprising. Yoko gave us a warm welcome, though, and already had a big dinner set out for us when we arrived. Sam had been rather keen on getting straight to the studio and starting to cut the footage, but the smell of Miso and cooked meat convinced us to stay for a little white. It was great to eat home-cooked food again.

Sam needed to open the safe for me before I was able to get the artefacts out. To do that, she had to call her father and that was a phone call I'd rather have not been listening to. I did step out of the partition so as not to look like I was eavesdropping, but it was impossible not hear her sullen reaction what I assumed were his excuses.

"I don't fucking get him," Sam said to me as she read the numbers she'd written on the back of her hand and entered them into the PIN-pad on the safe. "As far as he knows we just saved him from making huge losses this year and he can't even show up to thank us." I didn't know why it still surprised her. "At least he promised me a ninety minute slot, though, so I know what I need to cut everything down to."

She clicked the lock into place and let door fall open. My artefacts were in a crate inside, carefully packed. It was such a pleasant surprise to find myself feeling that rush of excitement again as I went through them to check they were all still in one piece. I took out one of the coins out, turning it over in my hands. I wondered how many people had done the same, hundreds of years beforehand.

Sam was watching me. "I think I've figured out how we can combine your love of archaeology with your love life," she said, and bent down into the crate to pick out one of the monstrous female Noh masks. She held in front of her face, and said in Japanese, "Give us a kiss!"

I desperately tried to shush her while she pushed me back onto the floor and knelt over me. She was saying _outrageous_ things to me in her Japanese Noh Mask voice, when Yoko said loudly and pointedly, "Would you girls like some tea?"

We dissolved into giggles, and I smacked her gently on the arm with the lid of the crate. "I thought you were in a hurry to get to the studio," I said to her. "Come on, let's change and head off."

The look Yoko gave us as we exited suggested Sam and I might find our futons on different sides of the house when we returned.


	37. Chapter 37

Not that Japan generally operated on anything resembling standard business hours, but even so it was after them when we arrived at Nishimura Corp's technical studios. The building was on the outskirts of Ota, several stories high with the Nishimura Corp logo lit on the top of it. Despite the fact it was dark, there were still quite a number of people at work in the building when we entered.

I'd insisted we'd pick up a pair of crutches for Sam on the way there, but she'd only taken a few steps with them and complained they hurt her armpits. Instead, she opted to just wear the moonboot and finish off the codeine. She was still limping.

I had been expecting the other employees to mostly ignore us, except that I forgot I was with the boss's daughter.

It made me smile to myself when I thought about the fact they all assumed I was _with_ her, and they were right. I glanced furtively at her as I carried the crate full of artefacts inside. My girlfriend, I thought, God, what an odd thing that was. I still felt like it might not actually be real.

The studio that Sam had had been granted was on one of the top floors, in the centre of the building with no air and no natural light. Alex would have loved it, I thought, and then was sorry that he wasn't around to appreciate it. I felt a familiar hole in the pit of my stomach on thinking about him. It wasn't as if I didn't have any experience learning how to manage without the people I cared about, but I didn't expect to find it as jarring the second time around. Even though he hadn't blamed me for what had happened and he certainly shouldn't have gone gallivanting onto the Endurance like that, I still felt guilty. He never would have been able to make that bad decision if he hadn't been on Yamatai to do it in the first place.

I put down the crate and cast my eyes around the small room. The first thing I thought was that both Sam and I could both fit under the desk and probably not be seen if someone was looking for us. I then had to ask myself what the point of that observation was when I wasn't in combat and no one _was_ looking for us.

It did have the two things we needed: two media decks, both with three enormous screens beside each other. Aside from the several panels of sliders and buttons that I had no idea about, the decks had PCs connected so I was able to take notes and use online libraries and catalogues to check details I wasn't certain about. There was also probably enough space for us to drag a table in from a nearby office so I could get to work on the artefacts.

Sam already seemed to have a good idea about what was missing from the footage she'd taken, and while I was dragging in the table, she filmed my progress and was already half-interviewing me.

I'd spread out all the artefacts on table behind the media deck, and briefly borrowed her camera to film all their details. I could take screen grabs later for their files. I then sat down to get to work with Sam hovering around me.

"So, wait," Sam said, pretending she hadn't heard that information before. "You're saying there was a real, live _dinosaur_ in that valley?"

"Sounds crazy, doesn't it?" I told her, squinting at the characters engraved into one of the fans. I took the camera off her again use the forward light to try and read them. I thought about how that whole scene had played out, including my conversation on the radio. "Larson wasn't surprised at all."

Speaking about him reminded me of being elbow-deep in his blood as I tried to revive him.

I gave the camera back to Sam, who added her two cents. "Well, I guess if your boss is a twenty-thousand year old who can fly, dinosaurs aren't that impressive."

I actually did smile at that as I typed some observations about the fan into Word. "He said something like that, actually. I mean, not exactly that, but because of her, nothing surprises him anymore."

Sam pulled up a chair and sat down beside me, her lopsided boots on the edge of the desk. She rested the camera between her knees. "Do you think he knew what she was planning to do?"

I thought about the conversations I'd had with him. "Yes," I said. "I think he knew something. When he helped me with the helicopter he said we'd all die if she succeeded, or something like that."

She was quiet for a few moments as she reflected on what I'd said. "I wonder what it was like for him," she said. "I heard what Pierre said about him."

I really didn't want to think too much about Larson, but at the same time I didn't really want to let myself get away with killing him by refusing to face what I'd done. Then again, how much of what happened was my fault, and how much had Natla expertly manipulated us into exactly that confrontation? That raised all sorts of other questions, such as whether I should have believed anything that came out of that woman's mouth at all. I should have known. God, what a headache.

"Sweetie, are you okay?" I snapped back to reality and waved my hand at her concern. She repeated, "Larson. I was just thinking about what it must have been like working for her for all those years."

I thought about her question, focusing on the fact he'd predicted his own death and didn't seem that fazed by it. "Pierre was right," I said at last, remembering that awful haunted look in his eyes when I'd mentioned that he was a father. "I don't think any part of him was happy to be working for her. I think he'd just given up." I wondered how much he must have gone through to get to a point where he just surrendered to her.

"Are you going to call her?"

I glanced at her for clarification. "Larson's daughter?" I asked, "I don't have any— oh, you mean Pierre's wife." The satellite phone was in my bag. That was another phone call I really wasn't looking forward to. "Yes, I will. No filming it, though. That's not fair to her."

Sam gave me a look over the LCD. "Come on, give me _some_ credit."

I put the fan down beside the keyboard and sat back in my chair. I could still remember Roth's face when he told me that my parents had been declared missing. He'd flown all the way from Thailand straight afterwards to tell me in person, and good thing he had. I had been absolutely devastated, and had spent then next month desperately begging him to take me out there so we could look together. I don't know how I'd have taken that news over the phone.

"Imagine if I was dead," I said to Sam. She stopped recording. "Can you imagine being told over the phone?"

She looked unsettled by that question. "Are you saying we shouldn't tell her?"

I exhaled and shook my head. "No… I'd still want to know if I was in her place." I stood up. "Guess I should stop putting it off."

I'd tossed my bag into the corner, and I walked over to it to rummage around inside. The satellite phone still had half a battery left; I wished my iPhone had that sort of stamina. Before I could talk myself out of it, I selected Aurelie's text message. It was in French and I had no idea what it meant, but used the number from it to call her.

Sam closed the door to the studio and came to stand beside me so she could hear.

The phone hardly rang even once. "Pierre?" She had a warm voice, but she sounded really anxious. She started a torrent of French.

"Aurelie, wait—" I interrupted her, hoping that her English was as good as his. "It's not Pierre. My name's Lara, and I—"

"You're Lara Croft?" she said, switching to English with a gentle accent. I wondered what he'd told her about me. "Is he there? Is he with you?"

Sam and I looked at each other, and I scrunched up my face. This was it, I thought. Sam was watching me with a very sympathetic expression, her hand on my lower back. "No, he's not," I said slowly. I let that sink in for a moment before I said, "I have some bad news."

She fell silent. Even though the line quality in satellite phones was never fantastic, I could hear her take a breath before she spoke. "Pierre calls me every day," she said, her voice was more measured. "I know that his job is dangerous. He calls me every day to let me know he's alright." I didn't say anything, waiting for her to continue. "He hasn't called me for nearly a week. I already know what you're going to tell me."

"I'm so sorry," I said to her. Despite the fact every time I'd squared off with him he'd tried to kill me, I suddenly felt very guilty about shooting him in the thigh so the centaurs could get him. She didn't sound like the sort of person who deserved to have their husband die so young.

As if reading my mind, she said, "Did you kill him?"

"No," I said. "It's… hard to explain what did. I'm not sure you'll believe me."

Like Larson and the dinosaurs, she didn't even sound like she'd batted an eyelid. "You'd be surprised," she said. "Pierre was always in this line of work, even when I met him. I used to think it was exciting."

I wanted to ask her exactly what she meant, but I'd just told her that her husband was dead, and it seemed a completely inappropriate time to be prying. Instead, I just let her talk. It sounded like the first time she was saying any of this, and choosing me say it to seemed like a strange choice. I supposed that maybe I was her only link to him. Perhaps it wasn't that strange, after all.

"He changed after he started working for Natla Tech and I had my accident. He didn't think the two were related. I knew they were. That woman you both worked for… He never took my concerns about her seriously." She sighed. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't be telling you this. Thank you for thinking to call me."

"It's okay," I said, curious about her thoughts on Natla. "I know what it's like to lose people close to you. I'm happy to listen."

I heard her take a muffled breath, but she smothered it. "He didn't like you, you know."

That wasn't the half of it. "Oh, I know. He made that very clear."

She chuckled at that. It was an odd sound to hear from someone who'd just learnt that their husband had died, even if she'd already had a week to come to terms with what had probably happened to him. "And yet you're still calling me? You're very nice."

A month or two ago, I'd have been happy to accept 'nice' as a compliment and give it no further thought. I wasn't sure that was still the truth, though. I wanted to believe it was, but did 'nice' people do the things I did? If I was _really_ honest with myself, part of the reason I was calling her was also because I wanted to know more about Pierre and Larson. Was it okay to want that if I also wanted to do the right thing and reassure her?

"As I said, I've lost people, too. I thought you should know, instead of always wondering." I took a breath. "Natla's dead, too," I told her, guessing from her comments on Natla that she might be interested in knowing. "Perhaps that's some consolation."

There was a heavy silence. Eventually Aurelie said, "No, I don't believe it." Sam and I looked at each other. "That woman…" she said. "Did you actually see her body?"

I didn't understand her paranoia about it. "Why do you ask?"

"Pierre killed her once. Or, at least, he thought he had." I felt a familiar sense of foreboding growing inside me as she continued. "She invited him a meeting the following week, acting as if nothing had happened."

Beside me, Sam was clearly uncomfortable. I threaded my fingers through hers.

"He just…" she exhaled. "He used to be different. He became obsessed with her. When I pointed out what she was doing to him, he would just accuse me of being jealous. I…" she paused. "I don't know what he said to you. He was probably very rude. We used to have a lot of friends…"

It was cleared why she was talking to me, now. She had no one else, not anymore. That poor woman. I felt awful for wanting to get information from her, but it seemed to be serving a purpose for both of us to be speaking. I wondered if I could slip a veiled question in. "He mentioned that he and Larson used to be friends?"

"Larson Conway? Yes, a long time ago. Before Natla Tech employed them both." I stayed silent, hoping she would continue. She did. "He was a lovely man. He didn't deserve what happened to him."

For a second I thought that she meant that I'd killed him, but she couldn't possible have known about that. "No, he didn't," I said, meaning what I'd done. "But it's over for him, now."

She took some time to process that. "Well, at least he's with his daughter. Pierre said he never quite recovered after she drowned."

Sam raised her eyebrows at me. She was dead?

She was quiet again. "As much as this is the worst thing that could happen… This was the only way Pierre was going to find peace," she said finally, actually sounding relieved. "He's free, now, whether or not she's actually dead. We both are."

What a stark thing to say about someone she loved. So much must have happened for her to get to this point and I wanted to ask her about it, but it wouldn't be right. She'd said enough, I couldn't conscionably push her for more.

Sam rested her head against mine as we listened. I let the silence stretch out before I said, "Will you be alright?"

"You mean because of my back?" I didn't mean that, but I let her continue. "It's been years, now. I can get around without my legs. I'll be okay," She said, and added so warmly, "Thank you for telling me, Lara. I can imagine what he was like to you, but thank you for calling me anyway."

"You're welcome," I said, feeling _awful_ for her. "I'm so sorry, I hope everything gets better for you."

"You, too," she said, and then the line went dead.

I stared at the phone in my hands.

Larson had given in to Natla, Pierre hadn't. Their lives were both ruined and they'd both ended up dead. What a monster she was.

"Can you maybe not make Pierre look like a total villain in editing?" I asked Sam. "I know he was a complete prick, but perhaps we can—"

"Lara," Sam interrupted me, emerging from deep in thought. "We actually _didn't_ see Natla's body." She looked across at me with big owl eyes. "What we saw was her clothes burning and her sinking into the deep lava. What if Aurelie was right and she's _not_ dead?"

Just the suggestion filled me with adrenaline. I took a deep breath to try and dissipate it. "You're scaring me, Sam," I said. "She was screaming. If it wasn't hurting her, why was she screaming?" I thought more about it. "I think it's normal for us to still be worried about it. But she's gone, we both saw it."

She didn't look convinced, but didn't offer any further argument. "I guess it's kind of hard to believe that I actually did it," she said. "I get what you mean, though. Like, there's a guy downstairs in a black jacket that looks like one of those Natla Tech ones all her men were wearing. When he turned around and looked right at me, I was like, 'Oh, my God! He saw me, he's going to catch me!'."

I put a comforting arm around her shoulder as we went back to the media decks. "You want to show me how you _did_ do it?" I asked.

She reached across me to pick up her camera, and popped out the memory card to insert it into the reader in the PC. As it loaded, she put her hands over her face. "God," she said. "Like, I know I filmed all this for you, but now that you're here I'm kind of wondering if I want you to see it."

We sat beside each other into the chairs we'd been in before, but we had to share a pair of headphones by holding them between us. I took her hand again, leaning forward with my other one to cue the video. There was huge chunk of footage that was just from Egypt, it stopped in the corridors under the sphinx. There was a few seconds of Larson talking and the sound of gunfire. Shortly after that, Sam had stopped filming.

The next shot was her in the back of what looked like a small yacht. The frame started on her face. Her hair was wet and she'd obviously been crying. "I'm going to get you out of there, Lara," she said, voice ragged. "I don't have any fucking idea how, but I can't leave you with her." She checked her phone. "It's Tuesday," she said. "Five thirty in the evening. I don't know how long it's been, maybe two or three hours. This guy here seems to think he's got somewhere specific he wants to take me. He kept saying 'Pierre', 'Pierre' so I figure maybe Pierre was going the same place you're headed. It's not the same guy that was driving us the other day, though, but I think he works for Saeed. I don't know what's going to happen, but it's better than doing nothing. Anything's better than doing nothing." The footage cut out.

It was difficult watching her like that, I thought, looking sidelong at her as the next part started.

It was in the room we'd been in on Saeed's boat. Sam didn't look in much better shape, and this time she looked like she hadn't slept. "It's Wednesday, Seven in the morning. Saeed said that Pierre paid him to take him to some island in Croatia, so it must be where she's taken you, inside Atlantis." Someone knocked on her door and she stopped talking and stared toward it. After a few seconds I could hear footsteps disappear down the corridor. "These guys are creeping me out," she told the camera. "One of them asked me if I have any children, and he looked really happy when I said I didn't. It's so scary without you. I didn't worry at all when you were here with me, now I have to think about all this stuff, like is the door locked, what could I use to defend myself…" She looked away from the camera for a second. "It's so fucked up. Lara, I just don't know if I can do it without you. I can't even handle these guys, how the hell am I going to rescue you from her?" She blotted her eyes on her wrists. "Maybe I should just record some tragic declaration about how in love with you I am and email it to you, in case you somehow managed to get out of there and I don't make it. Then at least you'd know."

I paused the video and looked across at her. She had her eyes on the floor. "See what I mean?" she said, trying to dismiss it. "It seems kind of ridiculous now."

"No, it doesn't." I looked back at the freeze frame of Sam's face on camera. I wondered if she'd have even said that to me without the camera between us. "It's so good to hear you say it without joking about it," I said. "I know you mean it."

She looked up at me. "Lara, _of course_ I mean it."

When she looked at me with that intensity, so openly and without her usual humour… I felt it. God, she loves me, I realised. This isn't at all about her sleeping with me because I'm handy and we both happen to be attracted to each other. It's more than that.

I leant toward her and touched my lips to hers. It was so gently that when she closed her eyes, I felt her eyelashes brush my cheek. In the quiet of the studio, I could hear each halting breath she took as our lips moved over each other. I pulled away for a moment and she whispered with her eyes still closed, "I never thought this would happen." Her breath tickled my chin. "I almost can't believe it."

I kissed her again, and one of her hands cupped my cheek. I reached between us and put my hand on her thigh, feeling the warmth of her skin through her trousers. She drew a ragged breath as I touched her. If only we were somewhere private. As we kissed, I murmured, "I want to show you how real it is."

"Lara..." Her hand fell from my cheek, and I could feel her undoing the buttons on the blouse I'd borrowed from her.

I stopped her. "Not here."

She sat back. Her cheeks were pink. "You want to go back home?"

I did, actually. "Don't you have video to cut?"

She made a face. "Yeah, and Dad's given me what is basically like five seconds to do it in."

I smiled. My hand was over hers on my blouse."There's no rush," I said. "Both of us are still going to be around later."

She nodded, and then smiled bashfully. "You still have another couple hours of me making a fool of myself to watch."

I squeezed her hand. "I'm looking forward to it."

The rest of the video diaries lead up to the entrance of Atlantis, and he last one was right before she entered. She didn't sound as upset as she had initially. Instead, she whispered to the camera, "Watch this," and snuck forward. Two of the men had gone up the corridor to speak to another, and Sam moved one of the torches so that the bar holding it threw a long black shadow against the wall. Then, she placed a deck of cards she'd found outside on the table. The men came back with a third, and one of the noticed the deck of cards. One of them bet the others he was a better poker player, and with that they were sitting down, dealing out the cards. Sam snuck along the black shadow to the corridor.

Meanwhile, my first thought was: three headshots, one, two, three. Close range, I'd catch them by surprise and I wouldn't miss.

I supposed that's why I usually ended up torn to shreds and she didn't. I could definitely afford to take a leaf out of her book.

"Shadows are the cheapest way to hide parts of a scene you can't get out of frame but don't want to show," she explained, sounding very proud of herself. "I spent six months with a camera in my hand learning how to hide other cameras and technical equipment actually _in_ frame."

The most impressive feat by far was when she pulled on the anchor cord of a hanging brazier so that it spun. While the men were staring up at it, making comments about how much the place freaked them out, she did nearly a full circle around their feet and headed through another doorway.

"That's actually really clever," I told her as we continued to watch. "What do they call that? Plausible diversion?"

Soon after that she turned the camera off and there was no more footage of Atlantis.

I stopped the video. "You really did do it," I said at last. "Some of those things I would never have thought of in a million years."

She grinned at me. "Told you: I'm not just a pretty face." She then scrunched up her pretty face. "I've got to get stuck into editing," she said. "Or I seriously am not going to get it done. What time is it?"

I glanced at the PC. "Wow, nearly eleven."

"You don't feel like getting me coffee, do you?"

"I think I could do with one myself," I said, standing. "Double-shot?"

She nodded, popping out the memory card and rolling her chair around the desk to the other media deck. "There's twenty-four hour coffee shop just two doors up. The sign that looks like a frog."

Frogs and coffee, I thought, there's two ideas you're never ordinary associate with each other. I must be in Japan.

As Sam booted the PC and started fiddling with the deck, I exited the room and tried to find my way out of the building.

It was a bit chilly outside, but it was a welcome change to feel some breeze on my face after a couple of hours in that stuffy room. Before I went into the café Sam had told me about, I stood on the corner and looked around me.

The drinking crowd had already started to assemble in the restaurants around the building. Men and women in suits were talking animatedly and eating what was left of their dinners while they cracked out the alcohol. It was a Thursday night, and there was still at least another day of work for all of them before they could sleep off their hangovers. It was certainly a different set of people that you generally found out drinking in London.

I looked from face to face. Everyone looked so relaxed. There was something incredibly reassuring about people just going about their everyday business, content and safe.

I wondered what would have happened to them if Natla succeeded, or, for that matter, if Mathias had managed to resurrect Himiko.

It was a sobering thought.

In the café, the barista recognised me. Of course she did: Yamatai was a uniquely Japanese legend. "Lara Croft!" she said, pronouncing my name the Japanese way. I smiled. "Congratulations on finding Yamatai," she said in Japanese as she dried her hands and came up to the register. "My mother used to tell me the story of the story of Queen Himiko when I was a little girl. Now my daughter won't shut up about it. She's decided she's going to be a Sun Queen." She stood at the counter. "What can I get you?"

I thought about Sam nearly having been possessed, and decided not to tell the barista the details about how the Sun Queen actually ascended. "Two large lattes," I said. "Doubles."

She chatted as she prepared them. When she put them on the counter and I gave her my card, she apologised profusely and gave me a sheet of coloured note paper. "I'm sorry to ask this," she said. "But my daughter would love it if you would write something for her."

I stared at the piece of paper. It had a smiling sun motif in the corner. "Really?" I asked her, and she nodded. I accepted the pen.

I asked the daughter's name and then wrote her a short note. When I gave the paper back to the barista, she looked absolutely charmed. "It was lovely to meet you in person," she said, and then gave me two pastries to go with the coffee and refused to charge me for them.

As I walked out of the café with the paper bag and the coffees, I had a big smile on my face. Whether or not I deserved that little girl's admiration after everything that I'd done, I _had_ found Yamatai and it did feel good to be recognised for that.

Sam was already hard at work when I returned, watching the video running on one screen occasionally pausing it to copy and drag sections to one of the other screens. When she dumped them, she quickly typed a few notes on each one that made very little sense to me.

I put the coffee on the desk beside her and placed one of the pastries on top of it. "You're a lifesaver," she said, and lifted the pastry for a moment to take a big mouthful of coffee. She abandoned them both to dump another section of video.

The video she'd just cut was of me shooting at the crocodile in St. Francis' Folly.

It was actually shocking to me how professional I looked. The way I was standing, the grip I had on the gun and my expression: I looked calm and determined. Considering I'd been completely terrified when it had happened, it was strange to see what I came across like on camera.

"Wow," I said. I watched her cut another section of me rolling out of gunfire in the coliseum.

Sam grinned. "I know, right? One hundred per cent badass. The viewers are going to love it." She looked back and me and gave me the once-over. "And," she said, "Can I say it? I'm totally hitting that."

I rolled my eyes at her and sat down to watch her as I drank my coffee. None of the footage she'd taken presented me as anything other than completely sure of myself. I couldn't look away from it. I liked that version of myself.

Sam wanted to keep working all night, but around two or three I just thought I'd rest my head back against the headrest of the swivel chair and I fell asleep.

Sam woke me up the next morning. "Hey, I've got a meeting with Marketing in like ten minutes. Did you want to go home and sleep after that?"

I stared at her. "You've finished already?"

She shook her head. "But I've got enough for them to come up with strategy and trailers for. I shouldn't be more than an hour. You can wander around if you want, no one will mind."

I had actually been thinking I might just go back to sleep. After she had gone, I couldn't, though. I was too stuck on that image of myself as a professional… whatever it was that profession would be called. Extreme Archeologist? I grinned at the thought.

I rolled over to Sam's computer and played a few of the scenes she had cut. It was just so odd to watch myself smoothly scaling everything as if it was no effort. I liked seeing it, and it reminded me of when I'd been barrelling through Yamatai screaming insults at the men trying to kill me. Sam didn't even need to cleverly cut the video for me to see it: I was _good_ at this.

I didn't know how I would go back to desk work and bureaucracy. Despite everything awful that had happened, I found myself not wanting to go back to grant applications and carefully brushing over sand in cordoned-off sections of digs, not now I knew there was an alternative.

When Sam came back, she had a giant grin on her face. "They totally loved it, and they've given us 87 minutes _next week_ , in both Japan and a couple of cable channels in the US. They're bumping a prime-time show for it. _"_ She looked absolutely delirious, but then winced as she remembered something. "Okay, don't kill me, though. Really dramatic titles attract viewers."

"'Really Dramatic'?" I asked, expecting the worst. "What are they calling the show, 'Archeologists Gone Wild'?"

She squinted and said gingerly, "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider."

Well it wasn't _that_ bad. I wasn't particularly fond of the insinuation that I was just going around helping myself to whatever I felt like from archaeological sites, though. Unlike Natla with Qualopec's belongings, I wasn't going to auction them to the highest bidder. I did actually intend to pass the artefacts on to museums and universities.

What the title did leave out was that fact I hadn't done it all by myself, though. "But what about you?"

She shrugged. "It's better to just focus on one person. I'm going to get a lot of attention anyway, just from the show." She put the memory card back into the PC and sat down in the chair again. "Plus, let's be serious, I either look completely incompetent or like a total snivelling wreck in most of the footage of me. I kind of don't want to be known as your weeping, tripping sidekick."

"You're not editing yourself out completely, though, are you?"

She shook her head. "No, there's a lot of audio." She set herself up to continue editing.

"Weren't we were going to go sleep?"

She put the headphones around her neck. "I'm just in a really good place right now," she said. "I think I can push out a couple more hours. If you want to take a cab home that's cool with me, though, you can get reception to order you one."

I wasn't going home without her, so I sat back in the chair next to her deck, watching her grab more chunks of video. "'Tomb Raider'," I repeated.

I thought back to Vilcabamba, and how much I'd enjoyed exploring it. I could have stayed there for days and still not being able to see and touch everything that interested me.

That was before anyone was trying to kill me or capture me, though. If I could somehow manage to avoid getting caught in anyone's tangled web… well, I could certainly see myself enjoying this sort of exploring just like I had in Vilcabamba.

"I'm really good at this," I said, still amazed by that fact as I watching cue a video capture of me leaping across a gap in the Folly.

"Yup," she said, inserting the video into another segment she'd already cut. "And," she played the full segment to me: it followed me along a beam and had me leaping across a gap in the wall, "I'm really good at _this_."

She waved her hands in a 'tada' motion, and I pretended to clap for her. Replaying it again, she made some small timing adjustments. "Marketing thinks it will have a kind of Blair Witch Project feel. No one will know whether it's real or not. Especially with the fact that Natla is missing and she's in this."

"Are they worried we'll get in trouble?"

Sam shook her head. "Who would believe two uptown girls would be able to save the world?" She added a colour filter. "They just think that it will look like we're taking current events and messing with them. Satire, I guess. I can make sure nothing too incriminating shows."

We got to the part where she had the camera pointed directly into Pierre's open midsection, and both sat away from the screen with horrified expressions on our faces.

"I need a filler for that," Sam said, quickly skipping past it. "I'll get you to stand in the middle of some big open area and explain what happened with dramatic music. If you're worried about Aurelie, you don't have to even talk about Pierre, you can just tell the viewers about the centaurs."

The image of Pierre gored was glued on the back of my retinas. "If I decide to keep doing this," I said, "what would you do if that happened to me? If you got that phone call I needed to make to Aurelie saying that you'd lost me?"

"Yeah, I'm not going to lose you," she said, saving her work in two different places and then spinning around in the chair to me as the computer shut down.

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because I'm going to come with you, silly." She kissed my nose as she stood up, adding, "And by the way, you don't have any say in it so you can't blame yourself next time I end up in one of these." She waggled the moonboot as she collected her bag and stood in the doorway. "Come on, let's go home."

Home, I thought as I followed Sam out of the building into the morning sunlight. I was looking forward to finding one with her.


End file.
